


The Death of Innocence and Hope

by efifeadams (brooklynisosm)



Series: Assassins- The Death of Innocence and Hope [1]
Category: Assassins - Sondheim/Weidman
Genre: American Presidents, Assassins, Betrayal, Broadway, Chaptered, Depression, Hidden Depths, Historical, Hurt/Comfort, I'm pretty sure that it's wrong for this to exist but whatever, JWB is a manipulative little bitch but it's okay because he develops feelings at some point, Lee Harvey Oswald just really really needs a hug, M/M, Murder, Musicals, Nonbinary Character, Not Beta Read, Timeline What Timeline, Tragic Romance, What Have I Done, a big f-ing mess, anyway, characters being kind of out of character, i mean come on assassins why are you so male, if you're reading these tags and thinking i'm crazy then i have to say you're right, lyrics used as dialogue, sara jane moore the sassy friend who knows you better than you know yourself, seems legit, shooting presidents, the Balladeer is in love with JWB you can fight me on this, the balladeer is morality and hope, the only reason you'll ever read this is probably if you know me in real life, the proprietor is the literal devil, this is possibly the crappiest thing you will ever read at least in the beginning so sorry, trigger warning for suicidal thoughts and literal suicide and general messed-upedness of characters, ugh so many men, uh i should probably put a trigger warning?, what do you mean this is too gay nothing can be too gay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-22
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 14:56:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8628697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brooklynisosm/pseuds/efifeadams
Summary: John Wilkes Booth is given a mission by the Proprietor: turn the Balladeer into Lee Harvey Oswald. (At least that's the idea I started with and I don't really know where it's gone at this point)





	1. The Ballad of Booth

**Author's Note:**

> As the stage manager of this fanfiction, I have six notes: 
> 
> First of all, if you are here because you were in this show with me, hello! Thank you for finding your way here! Since the Assassins fandom is nonexistent, probably no one else will ever read this, so the comments section is your domain to say whatever you want. 
> 
> Second, this story is un-beta'd and written over many long nights, much during and after performances. Is it any good? Who knows. I started it as a joke that turned into something I actually cared about. My point is, don't have high expectations. That way, you might be pleasantly surprised. 
> 
> Third, I know that John Wilkes Booth was a racist killer. I know that Lee Harvey Oswald was abusive to his wife Marina, and also that he killed JFK. How I write them in this story is based more on how they see themselves than necessarily how I see them. However, I am a strong believer in seeing the different sides to every story. 
> 
> Fourth, there may be some trigger warnings. Lee is suicidal and Booth actually shoots himself. Also: mental breakdowns, killing, manipulation, and mention of emotional and physical abuse. 
> 
> Fifth, I don't own Assassins. I used dialogue and lyrics from the show, but some are slightly changed and I completely changed the direction of the Texas Book Depository scene. 
> 
> Sixth, the story is broken into six sections. If you came for the gay, it is mostly hinted at in the first few sections, but picks up closer to the end. If you reach the end of what is currently published and it doesn't seem like the end, that's most likely because it isn't. 
> 
> Thank you. You may proceed.

 

 

**THE BALLAD OF BOOTH**

_ Hey pal- feelin’ blue?  _

John Wilkes Booth’s world has been destroyed. 

_ Don’t know what to do?  _

It’s a glittering world, made of lights and applause, but even if it still exists, it’s been thrown off-balance. 

_ Hey pal- I mean you.  _

And it’s all because of that sick, vulgar tyrant.  _ Abraham Lincoln.  _

_ Come here and kill a president.  _

Perhaps it’s the devil there, in the shadows of the stage, Satan who beckons John into ruination. But the day after the South’s surrender is drowned in liquor and rage, and he doesn’t quite remember who hands him the gun and whispers that delicious idea in his ear. 

He will be Brutus. He will slay the tyrant. 

All he knows is that he takes the gun and tells his friends and now they are going to kill the President. 

* * *

_ Everybody’s got the right to be happy. _

John sneaks up to the President’s box. Everyone knows who he is, and nobody stops him. 

It all seems to happen in slow motion: the click of the trigger, the bang, the last shot of the Civil War. 

Mary Todd Lincoln lets out an agonized scream.  _ His wife will weep.  _

John scrambles over the balcony, twisting through the air. He lands on his feet. Something’s wrong with his left leg, but he doesn’t linger on it. Adrenaline has replaced his blood, and pain is shoved away by triumph, victory. 

He runs down the aisle, climbs up onto the stage where the actors have frozen, all semblance of character broken. John Wilkes Booth is the star now, and he delivers the line he will be remembered for: 

“ _ Sic Semper Tyrannus! _ ” 

* * *

Days later, holed up in a barn, his leg impossible to walk on, and his greatest performance slammed by every newspaper, John Wilkes Booth’s sweet taste of victory has faded to bitterness.

His hand shakes as he tries to write. This will be the truth: his soliloquy, his charge. This will be the monologue that makes them listen. That makes them realize his heroism, the romance of his cause. 

The words can’t form on the page. 

“Damnit!” 

The doors burst open. Davey dashes in, holding John’s crutches under one arm. 

“They’re coming!” his friend says. “They’ll be here any minute!” 

Davey begins to collect their things: the newspapers, the liquor, the journal. John drops his pen, grabbing Davey’s arm with a trembling hand. 

“I need your help, Davey,” he says. 

Davey kneels down next to him. “I got a horse. If we can get across the river-”

“Not with those!” John gestures wildly at the crutches, knocking them to the floor with a clatter. The movement of his upper body sends pain shooting through his leg. “I’ve got to write this and I can’t hold the pen!” 

“Johnny, they’ve found us.” Davey’s fingers dig into John’s arm, shaking just much as John is. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

Still, not even his friend’s fear changes his mind. “Not till I finish this.” 

“ _ Johnny-”  _

“No! Have you seen these papers? Do you know what they’re calling me? A common cutthroat! A hired assassin!” Anger colors his vision a spotted red. “This one says I’m  _ mad _ !” 

“We must have been mad to think we could kill the president and get away with it-”

“We  _ did  _ get away with it. He was a bloody tyrant and we brought him down! And I will not have history think I did it for a bag of gold or in some kind of rabid fit!” 

“Johnny, we have to go-”

“No!” John slams a hand down. He takes a shuddery breath.  “I have to make my case. And I need you to take it down.” 

Davey’s practically crying. “We don’t have time-” 

John draws his gun and points it at Davey’s forehead. “Take. It. Down.” 

His friend’s eyes widen in betrayal, and Davey falls back, grabbing the pen and journal, scrambling to sit. 

John is an actor, not a writer, but he’s read enough scripts to know how to arrange words to make people listen. 

“An indictment,” he says. He lets his hands shake freely and ignores the nausea creeping inside him, as well as the searing of his leg. “Of the former President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, who is herein charged with the following High Crimes and Misdemeanors-”

The last thing John expects is to be interrupted, but the voice that cuts through his is not Davey’s. It’s soft, and strangely comforting. Like an old friend.  

“They say your ship was sinking, John…” 

John tries to ignore it, no matter how distracting it is. He’s been bothered by this voice since he shot Lincoln, and he needs to get this down.  He continues. “One: That you did ruthlessly provoke a war between the South and the North that cost some six hundred thousand of my countrymen their lives. Two-”

“You’d started missing cues.” 

This time John allows the voice a glance; alone, in the corner of the barn, is a figure. Not so much a person as an echo of one. This man has been following John, but Davey can’t see him. Nobody has noticed him at all. John doesn’t know who he is, but he does know that he isn’t as disturbed by this man’s presence as he should be. 

On the contrary: the man’s voice sounds like home, like guilt, but goodness too. The way he looks at John, like he cares, like he wants to understand instead of blindly calling him wrong, creates a new ache. One that has nothing to do with his broken leg. This pain shoots through his chest, and he doesn’t like it. 

_ Who is he?  _

“ _ Two _ ,” he says again.  _ Focus.  _ “That you did silence your critics in the North by hurling them into prison without benefit of charge or trial. Three-” 

“They say it wasn’t Lincoln, John.”

_ It  _ was _ Lincoln. I’m trying to tell you- just- _

“Shut. Up,” he snarls. “Three-” 

“You’d merely had a slew of bad reviews.” 

“I said  _ shut up!”  _

The door of the barn breaks open. A Union soldier rushes in; without even thinking, John shoots him. He stumbles back with a gasp. The man in the corner shakes his head. 

“Booth!” It must be the leader of the hunt, one of the hundreds of Union bastards who think they can avenge their president. They can’t. The deed’s already done, and nothing will bring back that cult leader. “I have fifty soldiers out here, Booth! Give yourselves up or we’ll set fire to the barn!” 

Panic flashes across Davey’s face. 

“Don’t shoot!” he shouts. “I’m coming out!” 

Before John can do anything, Davey flings the journal and pen down, and dashes towards the door. 

“No!” John screams after him, lunges, but it’s too late. 

He collapses, letting out a wail of pain. 

He lies there for a moment, his hand reaching out for something, anything. The pen. Davey. A world before Abraham Lincoln. 

A sob claws from his throat. He covers his mouth with his hand, pushing it back down. 

He’s lost everything.  _ Everything-  _ his acting career, his family, his friends, Davey. His entire life gone with the pull of a trigger. 

But John doesn’t regret it. The thought is as angry and sharp as the pain of his broken leg. He’d rather kill Lincoln than live a thousand lives of glitter and luxury. Rather avenge  _ his _ country than live in Lincoln’s. 

He raises his head slowly, reaches for the journal. His hands have either stopped shaking or he’s lost the ability to feel. 

Maybe John is crazy. But he holds his journal out to the man leaning in the corner of the barn, the one whose voice is so achingly familiar, like he’s heard it in a dream somewhere. 

The man makes no move to take the journal. He looks at John, his face partially obscured by shadow, but with a visible expression of disappointment. Pity. Maybe even sadness. 

“I have given up my entire life for this one act, do you understand?” John takes a ragged breath. He wants to be angry, wants to burn hot like the barn around him, but he only finds desperation. “I will not let history rob me of its meaning.” He squeezes his eyes shut, fighting back tears, but they come rolling down his face anyway. “Pass on the truth.” 

The man finally looks up, and John meets his eyes. 

“You’re the only one left who can.” 

They say near death, one’s entire life flashes before their eyes. But in the time that this stranger comes and takes John’s legacy, a different life plays. There’s the man- a boy, growing up, being slapped across the face by his mother, dressed in an army uniform, cutting his arm open in a Russian hotel, standing opposite a woman in a white dress, his eyes darting as if uncertain. Hitting the woman as his mother hit him. Staring at guns in a store window. Holding a baby that only cries when he touches it. Buying a gun. Writing a note.  _ My dearest Marina.  _ Looking at his wife one last time. Kissing the foreheads of his children. Driving to work. Putting a gun to his head-

It’s the voice of the man that snaps John out of the trance. He reads from the diary. He doesn’t look happy, like reading what John wrote is hard to bear. 

“Damn you, Lincoln. You  _ righteous whore _ ,” he says. “You turned your spite… into civil war…” 

“You will tell them the truth.” John says. He looks up at this being who shares a face with the man from the vision, but who he can somehow tell is not the same. “How the South won’t recover. It can never again be the hope that it was- the Union would never… never end the war. Tell them. Make them listen.” Tears run down his face, but for once this monologue isn’t a performance. “Please. _ Please. _ ” 

The man stares at him, as if seeing him in a different way. He frowns, and it’s as if something hits him. 

“ _ Attention must be paid, _ ” he says. 

John takes it as a yes. The words resonate with him, though he’s not quite sure why. 

He can hear the crackle of burning wood, like a fireplace surrounding him. He won’t let the Union have him. Won’t give them the satisfaction of taking Lincoln’s killer. 

If he is to die, it will be on his own terms. 

What is there left to live for, anyway? His country is in ashes. Everything he stands for is betrayed. He is alone. 

He takes one last look at the man in the corner, who’s trying to say something, but he drowns it out. 

John clicks his gun to a new chamber. His arm is finally steady when he lifts it and puts the barrel to his temple. 

_ The country is not what it was.  _

Click. 


	2. Booth's Second Assassination I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah this chapter ain't the greatest and it's probably confusing as hell but I like the ending

**BOOTH’S SECOND ASSASSINATION I**

John’s head hurts. It hurt when the bullet went in, though only for a second, but now this sort of ache has spread through his skull, pounding at his brain. Like he drank too much last night. 

Last night, he died. 

He opens his eyes. 

He should be dead. He’s in a carnival. The world is bright around him, draped in red, white, and blue. 

John sits up, noting that he feels no pain in his left leg. 

Well, this doesn’t seem like Hell. But it’s not Heaven, either. He pushes himself to his feet, trying to get more of a bearing of his surroundings. 

“Well done.” 

The voice makes John nearly jump out of his skin. He swirls around, reaching for his gun, only to realize he doesn’t have it. 

There’s a man standing in front of him, looking at home in the carnival in a striped shirt and dapper vest. He smiles at John, a dangerous smile that doesn’t seem genuine. 

“Really. You performed very well, Mr. Booth. Lincoln couldn’t have asked for a better killer.” 

“Who are you?” John says. 

“You don’t recognize me?” The man’s tone is disappointed, though his face doesn’t reflect it. “Maybe this will spark your memory.” 

He holds out John’s gun to him. 

“Hey pal, wanna kill a president?” he says. 

Oh. 

“You’re the one who told me to-” 

“They call me the Proprietor,” the man says. 

“Why?” 

“Why do they call me the Proprietor?” the Proprietor says. 

“Why’d you tell me to kill Abraham Lincoln?”

“Because it’s your destiny.” 

John isn’t sure what’s even happening, but he goes along with it. “I can live with that,” he says. “Well, die with it.” 

“I’m surprised you’re so willing to accept this,” the Proprietor says. “Most people ask more questions.” 

“I’m an actor,” John says. “I adapt well. Besides, I can’t say this is the strangest thing to happen to me today. Who was that man? Following me? 

There are more pressing issues, but for some reason, that voice haunts him. 

The Proprietor waves a hand. The vision of the man appears, a faint smile on his face. “This one?” 

“Yes.” John glares at the image. 

“He is your mission,” he says. “Your past. Your present. And your future.” 

“What?” 

“His name is Lee Harvey Oswald,” the Proprietor says. “Though he doesn’t know it yet.” 

“That makes no sense,” John says. 

“It doesn’t.” 

“Well, what is he now?” 

“I suppose,” the Proprietor says, “you could call them  a… guardian… of sorts. I call them the Balladeer. They know you. They can see everything you do. They are your past, that nagging of conscience in the back of your mind whenever your temper takes the best of you, the one friend that will never abandon you even if you ask them to. They are your present, manifesting themself when you won’t listen to them in any other way. And they will be your future, in ninety-eight years and seven months, when you meet Lee Harvey Oswald in the Texas School Book Depository and tell him to shoot his president.”  

“This makes less sense with every word you say. This whole thing makes no sense.” 

The Proprietor smiles at John, amused. John bristles. He doesn’t like being laughed at. He doesn’t like this at all. He shot Lincoln. He saved the South. He wants to go to Heaven, not have things he doesn’t understand explained to him by this strange man. 

“I’m dead,” he says. “I shot myself. I’m gone. By now they’ve probably spread my ashes; I can’t just-” 

“You can,” the Proprietor says. “You can keep existing.  _ If _ you convince him. He is your past, present, and future- your whole world, John. If he doesn’t fulfill his purpose, then you won’t have either, and it will be like you were never born, never pulled that trigger. Your fate depends on his fate. This is your job, your real job. Killing Lincoln was just the beginning. This task is your most important: with it, you will have not just started an era, but ended it. This is better than Heaven, John. Trust me.” 

“What do I need to do?” 

The words slip out of his mouth before his mind has settled on yes. 

“Kill the Balladeer. With the death of innocence and hope comes the birth of Lee Harvey Oswald.” 

“How?” 

The carnival disappears, replaced by a bar. 

The proprietor’s voice echoes through:  _ you make them lose hope themself.  _

* * *

John knows why the voice of the man in the barn sounded so familiar now- it’s the voice of guilt, of hope, of comfort, of dreams, of love. It’s gone now. There’s an empty space where his conscience used to be, and he doesn’t want it filled.

He’ll make the Balladeer lose hope. And he won’t feel bad about it. He’s in no need of kindness, innocence, love, dreams. This country is built on is chaos and despair. 


	3. Balladeer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I struggled with the characterization of the Balladeer, but basically, they act as the conscience of first Booth, then Guiteau, then Czolgosz.   
> I don't know how the singing part works, but let's just say the Balladeer also represents the voice of the American people. Metaphors.

**BALLADEER**

The entity called the Balladeer does not have their own existence.

As a conscience, they are here to serve others. One person at a time, specifically, but if they succeed at their task, they’ll help a lot more than an individual. 

They see everything in one man’s mind and hear it and feel it. 

They were born with the Presidency of the United States, and suppose they will die with it, too, because all things must die. 

Even though they know a lot about death, their greatest weapon is hope. 

Hope. That beautiful light, that power greater than love and hate and fear. 

Hope, which everyone they know lacks. 

There used to be hope within John Wilkes Booth. But the Balladeer felt it die. When the South surrendered, John’s hope did too, and there was nothing they could do to salvage the ashes of it. 

That was when the Balladeer was forced to manifest. They couldn’t just be the voice in the back of John’s mind anymore, struggling to soothe the anger that tore through his body. They had to exist within John’s world. And now, even if they can’t save the madman, maybe a part of the Balladeer’s being just wants to _ see _ him.

John Wilkes Booth is off his head, but the Balladeer has been with him for his entire life. 

“Why did you do it, Johnny?” They ask the question though they already know the answer. They’ve tried to tell John this countless times: angry men don’t write the rules, and guns don’t right the wrongs. Killing Lincoln will only make the North more hostile to the South.  _ You _ have everything. Don’t throw it all away. 

But John doesn’t listen, or is too angry to care. He’s intent on making the North pay, on avenging his country, on forcing the world to know that he is not insane. He is a man with a cause, and nothing the Balladeer does or says will change his mind at this point. 

“Tell them,” John says. He’s shaking, taking no notice of his tears. “Make them listen. Please.  _ Please.”  _

Something flashes before the Balladeer’s eyes. John looking straight at them. Saying, “Attention must be paid.” They don’t know what it means. 

John nods, taking deep breaths. He says, more to himself than the Balladeer, “The country is not what it was…” 

John holds the gun to his head. 

The Balladeer wants to tell him not to do it, that there’s another way, but it’s like John’s blocked them out. They reach out a hand, but they’re frozen when the bullet pierces John Wilkes Booth’s skull and puts out whatever little light was left within him. 

John has died many times onstage. Sometimes the Balladeer would manifest, just to watch his performances; he truly was the most promising actor of the generation. John always fell theatrically, his hand clutching at whatever stab or bullet wound his character had received this time. He made dying an art, knew how to draw it out just long enough to make the audience sob and give him five star reviews the next day. 

This death is different from the others. John falls like a stone, his body collapsing in on itself when the bullet hits. No performance about it, not even a cry. Just a small whimper of pain from the back of his throat, and the click of the trigger, and the sandbag sound of the body hitting the floor. 

The Balladeer has spent their entire existence feeling the emotions of others. For the first time, they feel something of their own. It’s called sadness. 

* * *

Later, they find John’s body. Union soldiers have salvaged the corpse from the barn, which is now ashes blowing across the flatlands. None of the soldiers can see the Balladeer; only John could, and John is dead.

The emotions that once ran hot through the youngest Booth, that the Balladeer felt too, have cooled, completely disappeared, leaving only an emptiness. Tentatively, they reach down and touch his face. No one has ever touched the Balladeer before. 

John’s forehead is red, blood soaking through his once-silken hair, the only warmth left on his body. The Balladeer brushes that hair back, not caring that their hand comes back scarlet. 

“Damn you, Booth,” they say. 

* * *

The next man the Balladeer knows is named Charles Guiteau. He's got half the charisma and twice the insanity of John, and the Balladeer finds themself, frustratingly,  missing their previous charge.

Guiteau is never angry, but he does things that even John would find repulsive. He doesn't listen to  _ anything  _ the Balladeer says; he'd drown a baby if a situation arose where that would be an option. Charles Guiteau has never felt guilty for a thing in his life, as if he's deaf to the Balladeer’s voice. In fact, sometimes he shuts them out completely, so that they aren’t able to see anything at all. There are long periods of silence where the consciousness of Charles Guiteau can’t be reached at all. 

It’s true: the Balladeer misses John. 

Yes, it's ridiculous. Missing John Wilkes Booth: a racist, manipulative killer. But John could also  _ feel,  _ a thing Guiteau lacks besides his sick optimism. 

And if one thing can be said about John: he shone. Right up to /his final moments, he held himself in a way that made it impossible to look away. Even the Balladeer, who knew all of John’s true thoughts and emotions, was capable of being fooled by his grace and glitter, and when he got onstage, he could wrench a tear from the eye of even the most stoic of gentlemen. John went through his life drawing people to him, the Balladeer included. 

Guiteau goes through life driving people away. Only the Balladeer can see how desperate he is for someone to listen; Guiteau can’t feel his own wounds. No empathy. No kindness. It’s horrible to behold, horrible to know that they can’t help at all. 

When the Balladeer’s newest charge also ignores their calls of protest and shoots a President, they are again overcome with an unbearable sadness that is all their own. Will it always lead to this? Staying with a man his entire life, only to watch him throw it all away with the pull of a trigger? 

Guiteau’s trial is lost before it begins, and soon he’s mounting the stairs to the gallows. And the Balladeer assumes their role, something they don’t know why they even play it, telling the story of yet another killer. 

“Look on the bright side, not on the sad side. Inside the bad side, something’s good. This is your golden opportunity,” they say. 

And, to their surprise, Guiteau looks up. There is not happiness in his face anymore, looking down at the crowd, having the noose placed around his neck. 

Finally, he hears the Balladeer. 

“You’ve been a preacher.” 

“Yes I have!” Guiteau shouts, a smile returning. 

“You’ve been an author.” 

“Yes I have!” 

“You’ve been a killer.” 

The grin disappears. “Yes, I have.” 

“You could be an angel.” 

“Yes, I could!” 

“Just wait until tomorrow,” the Balladeer says. The words seem appear in their mind, telling them what Charles Guiteau needs to hear. “Tomorrow, you’ll get your reward. What if you never got to be president? You’ll be remembered. Look on the bright side. Trust in tomorrow, and the lo-” 

The flash of a black velvet coat and golden vest beneath the gallows catches the Balladeer’s attention. There’s the familiar head of rakish, dark hair that had once covered their hand with blood. 

“John?” they say, barely daring to-

The hangman pulls the lever. Guiteau falls; his neck snaps. His feelings go cold. The Balladeer only half-registers the death. Their eyes are still fixed on the place where they think they saw John Wilkes Booth, and their heart, a thing they didn’t know they had, aches with a horrible hope. 

Charles J. Guiteau is taken away, but the Balladeer is still frozen, wracked with impossibility. Impossibility that John could be alive, that he could be here. 

And the impossibility that they feel the way they do. 

* * *

Leon Czolgosz is a quiet man. His rage is subtler than the Balladeer’s previous two charges, and his goals are unselfish. What he wants is equality, for no man to have more than another.

He listens to the Balladeer constantly, and almost never acts on his anger. It’s a much better track record than the others. He behaves civilly, keeps his temper in check, keeps his head down, and stays in line. 

In fact, the first twenty-seven years of Leon Czolgosz’s life pass by for the Balladeer fairly easily, with only a few hiccups. That is, until something strange happens. 

One day, a man approaches Czolgosz with an idea. That part isn’t surprising; recently, he’s been going to anarchist rallies and following the ideology of Emma Goldman. The Balladeer has watched it happen, something telling them to stay back and watch it play out. They think it must be one of Czolgosz’s anarchist allies, but they’ve also never seen this man before. 

The man says his name is the Proprietor, and presents Leon Czolgosz with a gun and the proposition to kill William McKinley. 

Immediately the Balladeer warns against it, but it’s as if they’re fading, being driven from Czolgosz’s mind more with every word the Proprietor says. Next thing they know, Czolgosz has taken them to a bar; the Proprietor pours drinks, and there are several people dressed… strangely. A woman wears a dress that shows her legs- scandalous in 1900. 

The door opens, and in walks Charles Guiteau. 

The Balladeer is rendered silent in shock for a moment. Czolgosz, of course, has no idea that the voice inside his head is anything more than his own morals, but the Balladeer knows. They also know that while timelines can overlap and time is fluid, never have two people he’s been the conscience of met. Right? Despite that one hallucination of John at Guiteau’s hanging, there’s been no crossing of paths. If there was, the Balladeer would remember it from Guiteau’s eyes. 

But they don’t. All they can do is watch mutely as Guiteau gives a toast, checking again and again and always coming up with the same answer that yes, this is definitely the same Charles J. Guiteau that they lived with for forty years. 

They’ve just about come to terms with the fact that Guiteau is _ somehow _ here, that time has gone strange in this bar run by the Proprietor, when the door opens, and in strides John Wilkes Booth. 

He looks exactly as the Balladeer remembers him: debonair, raffish, dressed in his finest clothes as if he’s just come offstage from a performance. 

A small man across the room groans. John smirks at him. “You really oughta do something ‘bout that stomach.” 

Luckily Czolgosz is sitting already, or else the Balladeer would make him. Their consciousness is spinning in confusion. It has to be- it has to be-

The barkeeper. The Proprietor, the one who handed Czolgosz the gun. He is doing this. 

John only shut the Balladeer out once. The time in which he decided to kill Lincoln. And Guiteau… Guiteau could have been approached by the Proprietor any number of times. 

The Balladeer is brought back to attention by the smashing of a bottle. Czolgosz is up before they can do anything, yelling, “Stupid boy!” 

The boy who broke the bottle flinches back. “It’s just a bottle, man,” he says. “Someone will clean it up.” 

“And someone will have to make another one!” 

There are many things that the Balladeer can get Czolgosz calm about, but the bottle factory isn’t one of them. They don’t even try, allowing the man to rage, too distracted to rein him in. It’s John who takes the Balladeer’s focus, his smile growing at the sight of Czolgosz’s anger. 

Even Guiteau stepping in and two of the Balladeer’s three charges arguing isn’t enough to draw attention away from John. 

It’s not until Czolgosz raises his arm, his muscles taut from the desire to smash the bottle, that the Balladeer comes back to their senses.  _ Don’t do it,  _ they say.  _ It will make you feel worse. Retain dignity.  _

“Go on,” John says. “Break it.” 

_ Don’t break it.  _

“See how it feels.”

_ Stop.  _

“I bet it’ll feel good. Just try it.” 

The Balladeer looks up at John; their eyes make contact. Although they are inside of Czolgosz, the Balladeer thinks they see a flash of recognition in John’s eyes. 

_ Why are you here? How are you here?  _

John doesn’t answer. “Break the bottle,” he says, then more aggressively. “ _ Break it. _ ” 

_ Don’t do it, Leon. You know it won’t help. Destruction never helps.  _

Czolgosz takes a deep breath and slams the bottle back down on the counter. Good. 

John crosses to the bottle. He picks it up, studies it. Then he looks at Czolgosz, and this time, the Balladeer is certain that he  _ knows.  _

He throws the bottle, shattering it on the floor with such force that shards fly out from the impact. 

“Men at some time are masters of their fates:” John, still fixed on the Balladeer, as if he’s talking directly to them. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are  _ underlings.” _

It's a personal attack. The Balladeer can't think of anything else for months after. 

* * *

Leon Czolgosz shoots William McKinley on a sunny September day at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo.

He’s a better planner than both Guiteau and John, thinking for months beforehand, saving up his money and concealing his gun in a handkerchief. Nobody sees it coming when Czolgosz makes it to the head of the line and shoots Big Bill. 

He tells the Balladeer  _ there’s nothing wrong about what I’ve done. Some men have everything and some have none, but now that will change.  _ And the Balladeer is powerless to convince him otherwise. 

As McKinley is carried away and Czolgosz beaten to the ground, the Balladeer thinks he hears John Wilkes Booth laugh. 

Czolgosz is executed in October, later that year, after a few long months of pain. The Balladeer often has to manifest, to tend to the injuries Czolgosz received from the masses of people grief-stricken by McKinley’s death. They have to remind Czolgosz that there’s nothing wrong about what he’s done, that he’s not a murderer, even though they don’t believe it themself. 

He thinks the Balladeer is a hallucination, and the Balladeer never corrects him. 

Just before the switch of the electric chair is pulled, Czolgosz shouts, “I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people! I did it for the help of the good people, the working men of all countries!” 

The Balladeer is furious with themself at this point. They have failed three times, failed to save the people they were supposed to keep safe. 

They stare at Czolgosz’s dead, glazed eyes and think of Guiteau. Of John. 

They’ve failed every single one of those assassins. They’ve failed the dead Presidents. They’ve failed America. 

They take a shuddery breath. Regret, reflection on failure, doesn’t help anyone. This country is built on dreams, and the Balladeer won’t forget it. The United States hasn’t broken yet, and they won’t let it. 


	4. Booth's Second Assassination II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is this

BOOTH'S SECOND ASSASSINATION II

The Balladeer drifts through time. They watch as Giuseppe Zangara is electrocuted, as Lynette Fromme’s gun doesn’t go off and Sara Jane Moore misses, as Sam Byck shoots himself in the cockpit of his plane, as John Hinckley hits Ronald Reagan. 

Still, all paths lead back to John Wilkes Booth. The Balladeer finds him in the Proprietor’s bar, sitting at the counter alone with a half-full bottle in front of him and his head in his hands. 

The Balladeer is careful as they cross, taking a seat next to John but leaving a few feet between them. 

“So you’ve found me,” comes a muffled voice. John’s voice had always been so melodic, so easy to listen to, but now it’s brittle. A touch away from breaking. 

“Yes,” the Balladeer says. “It wasn’t too hard.” 

John lifts his head. He looks the way he did when he died: exhausted, hurt, scared. The Balladeer wants to know why, but without living in John’s head, they can’t. 

“Were you looking?” 

“I don’t know,” the Balladeer says, truthfully. “What have you done to yourself, John?” 

John shakes his head, stares at the line drawn by the end of the liquor in the bottle. “Don’t do that.” 

“Do what?” 

“Ask me about my… well-being. Pretend that you care.” Something seems to break in John and he reaches for the bottle. Downs more of it, and squeezes his eyes shut as if it hurts him. “Don’t do that to me now.” 

Things finally slip into place. “You’re lonely,” the Balladeer says. 

There’s a silence. 

Finally, John whispers, “Yes.” 

He runs a hand through his hair. His eyes water; they glitter in the half-light. He speaks like he’s in confession. “You know, I made friends so easily when I was alive, but I never kept them.” He laughs bitterly. “They all realized at one point or another that I was gonna get them killed. They liked the famous actor. The life of the party- when I felt something  _ real _ , they ran away faster than I could ask them to stay.” 

He looks up at the Balladeer. “But you- you were always there. You cared about me. You loved me. You were my best friend and I- I didn’t even know it.” 

“Then what’s wrong?” the Balladeer says. “I’m here now. I can help you.” 

“No, you can’t.” John’s hand clenches into a fist. HIs voice shakes. “You didn’t help me then. You couldn’t save me. And now the country’s falling apart and you can’t save that either. Stop saying you can fix things when you can’t, Balladeer. Everything’s breaking and  _ hope doesn’t help _ !” 

He knocks the bottle off the counter and it shatters on the floor. The Balladeer flinches back, as if they’ve been stabbed by the words. 

John shoves away from the counter, shuddering like he’s cold. His back is to the Balladeer; they can hear him breathing. They remember the barn, the desperation of John then. It’s taken hold within this man again. 

“Sorry,” he says, so quietly that the Balladeer almost misses it. “I’m sorry.” 

“John-” 

He turns around. Holds out his arms, offering himself for judgement. “Look at me. Without a conscience, this is what I’ve become. A monster ruled by rage. Without you I’ve killed a president. Killed a country. Killed myself. I’ve done things I can never come back from, and I’ve liked it all, and I hate myself for it.”  

The Balladeer gets up from their stool and walks to John. They’re crazy. They don’t know why they’re doing this. 

They hold out their hand. 

“I could stay,” they say. 

John looks up and his eyes meet the Balladeer’s for a second, before he tears them away. “What?” 

The Balladeer takes another step. Their hand reaches out and they touch their fingers to John’s cheek, feather-light. 

“The truth is-” they say, “The truth is, I’ve missed you too. I wanted to save you so badly but I couldn't and it... ever since you died, I’ve been lost. I kept seeing you and I didn’t know what to do. I  _ was _ looking for you. I could stay. I could help you. I could  _ fix  _ you. I want to.” They brush a tear away from John’s face, stare straight into his jewel-like eyes. “We can try again.” 

Something passes between them. A moment. A wanting. The Balladeer feels like their chest is opening; for the first time in so long, they have someone. And John opens his mouth and says-

“No, we can’t.” 

It takes a second for the Balladeer to register that. 

_ “What?”  _

John smiles, but his eyes don’t. The exhaustion, the hurt, is gone from his face. He looks healthy. “Don’t you know anything?” he says, his voice melodic once more. “I don’t regret. I would never regret killing Abraham Lincoln.” 

_ John Wilkes Booth, an actor so skilled he could fool anyone.  _

“You- you were acting,” the Balladeer says. They should step away, but they can’t make themself. They shake. “You were lying the whole time.”

John leans in close. Again, the Balladeer tries to move back but they’re frozen. “I thought you'd see it earlier," he says. "Seeing as you're built on lies yourself." 

They hear a movement. Finally, they tear themself away from John, to look up and see every assassin. Every person that the Balladeer has ever failed. Each of them with an expression of pure hatred. 

“What is this?” the Balladeer says. 

“This?” John says. “This, Balladeer, is the day you die.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> JOHN WILKES BOOTH YOU BITCH


	5. Another National Anthem

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS F***ING CHAPTER

“I did it because it was wrong for one man to have so much service when other men have none…”

“I did it to bring down the government of Abraham Lincoln and to avenge the ravaged South…”

“I did it to prove to her my everlasting love…”

“I did it to make them listen to Charlie…”

“I did it cause my belly was on fire…”

“I did it to preserve the Union and promote the sales of my book…”

“I did it so my friends would know where I was coming from…”

“Where’s my prize?”

Their voices layer. They scream for attention. They live lives of loud desperation, crying out for somebody, anybody, to care.

“Where’s my prize?”

“I did it to make people listen.”

“They promised me a prize.”

“Because she wouldn’t take my phone calls-”

“What about my prize?”

“Because nothing stopped the fire!”

“I want my prize!”

“Nobody would listen!”

The Balladeer listens. To America’s rejects, to the traitors, to the madmen, to anyone who’s ever felt hopeless and unloved and betrayed.

They stand between these people and the country, protecting both from one another.

There’s Charles Guiteau. Leon Czolgosz. Giuseppe Zangara. Lynette Fromme. Sara Jane Moore. Samuel Byck. John Hinckley.

Booth has betrayed the Balladeer, and they can’t even bear to think of him as _John_ anymore.

These people are here to kill them. They are here to take the country, and make it their own, to make all of America feel their pain. They are here to break every promise this country ever made, crush it under the weight of their grief.

Just the presence of these people gnaws at the Balladeer, hopelessness tearing down hope.

One last chance. One final opportunity to stop this before the ones that America has ripped apart rip apart America.

“And it didn’t mean a nickel,” they say, “you just shed a little blood, and a lot of people shed a lot of tears. Yes, you made a little moment, and you stirred a little mud, but-” they turn to each of the assassins, speaking to them individually. “It didn’t fix the stomach, and you’ve drunk your final Bud, and it didn’t help the workers, and it didn’t heal the country, and it didn’t make them listen, and they never said we’re sorry-”

Samuel Byck interrupts, pushing the Balladeer’s spirit back with the power of his pain. “Yeah, it’s never gonna happen, is it? Is it?” He acts like it’s anger that fuels him, but it’s truly despair. “No, sir.”

“Never!” Czolgosz shouts, his face contorting in disgust, spitting at the Balladeer the way he once spat at William McKinley.

“No, we’re never gonna get the prize-”

“No one listens!” _The Balladeer listens. They have always listened._

“-are we?”

“Never!”

“No, it doesn’t make a bit of difference, does it?”

“Didn’t. Ever.”

“Fuck it!”

“Spread the word… where’s my prize…?”

It hurts. It’s like the Balladeer is being beaten with every _never,_ every _no one._ They struggle, searching for anything to say. Anything that isn’t a lie.

“I just heard-” they start, weakly- “on the news, where the mailman won the lottery… goes to show, when you lose, what you do is try again…”

They take a deep breath. They’re shaking, barely keeping their head over the water in this whirlpool of hate.

“You can be what you chose, from a mailman to a president-” It’s a choice, it’s a choice- the Balladeer cannot let the disillusionment of one part of America cloud their judgement- they can’t believe the people that say the American Dream has betrayed them because _it’s a choice and it’s not their fault if Guiteau died, if Czolgosz died, if ~~John~~_ _Booth died, because these were choices that the Balladeer, that the United States could not control and-_ “There are prizes all around you, if you’re wise enough to see-” The American Dream says that anyone can be anything- dream, dream- what is a dream? Can these people dream, or have their hearts become so empty that their minds aren’t capable of it? “The delivery boy’s on wall street and the usherette’s a rockstar-”

It’s easy for Samuel Byck to interrupt them. To silence them. Because the Balladeer doesn’t know if they have anything else to say… if there’s anything else they can _bear_ to say. They don’t know the truth.

What are they? Have they ever asked this question? What are they, and why are they only allowed to try and save people who can’t be saved, and is this their fault? Has their failure caused this? Is the country falling apart because of _them?_

“No one’s ever gonna even care if we’re alive-”

“Are they?”

“Never!”

“Spread the word… we’re alive…”

“Someone’s gonna listen! Listen-”

“Listen!”

It’s the Proprietor. The man the Balladeer knew was doing something bad from the beginning, come to rally his troops. To start a new Civil War, one between America and its outcasts.

“There’s another national anthem, and it’s not the one you hear in the ballpark…”

“Where’s my prize?”

“There’s another national anthem, saying, if you want to hear, it says-”

“Bullshit!”

“It says-”

“Never!”

“It says-”

“Sorry!”

“-loud and clear.”

The Proprietor makes his way down the line and the assassins seem to stand up taller with his passing. By the time he gets to Booth, the Balladeer is trapped. They can’t do anything.

“It says listen-”

The Proprietor looks to Booth. For one foolish second, the Balladeer thinks that John will step away, renounce this, stand with _them_ instead. That maybe his confession wasn’t a lie. That maybe he wants to be more than this.

But no. John Wilkes Booth’s eyes narrow, and his mouth twists into a vicious smile. He stands with the Proprietor. Like he always has.

This has been the goal all along.

“-to the tune that keeps sounding in the distance, on the outside, coming through the ground…”

The Balladeer should have listened harder.

“To the hearts that go on pounding, to the sound getting louder every year…”

Apart, the assassins can get their moment for a day. Together, they can change history.

“Listen to the sound…”

Apart, their gunshots shake the public.

“Take a look around…”

Together, their gunshots shake the world.

“We’re the other national anthem, folks, the ones who can’t get in to the ballpark…”

“Spread the word…”

Guiteau, Czolgosz, Zangara, Fromme, Moore, Byck, Hinckley, Booth- these are the Americans who live under another national anthem. One that does not promote hope and patriotism and light, but chaos, destruction, death. Nothing that the Balladeer could have done or said would have dragged these people out of the graves they dug for themselves.

“There’s another national anthem, folks, for those who never win-”

“For the suckers!”

“For the pikers!”

“For the ones who might’ve been!”

It’s as if the Proprietor is turning hopelessness into hope. Transforming that hurt into a power greater than any dream. The Balladeer fights against it, struggles to keep their own hope.

“There are those who like regretting-” they say- “there are those who like extremes-” they fight to move in front of the assassins, in between them and America. To guard it somehow. “There are those who thrive on chaos and despair.”

They take a desperate look at John. “There are those who keep forgetting that this country’s built on dreams-”

“People listen!” the Proprietor cuts in.

“And the mailman won the lottery-”

“They may not want to hear it, but they listen, once they think it’s gonna stop the game-”

“And the usherette’s a rockstar!” They can’t hear themself anymore. All they know how to do is stand their ground.

The assassins have nothing but hatred in their eyes, in their faces. They look past the Balladeer at the country, the land where any kid can grow up to be President, the shining city, the land of opportunity, of hope- and these people want to kill that all. All for the sake of _making people listen_.

“No, they may not understand all the words, all the same they hear the music-”

“They hear the screams!”

“I’ve got news!” Hurt is building in the Balladeer, clawing at their insides, trying to push out the hope.

“They hear the sobs, they hear the drums!”

“You forgot about the country!” _What about the people? How do you think you can heal your hurt by giving it to others?_

The assassins close in. The Balladeer is losing this war, they know they are. Their heartbeat, the heartbeat of the country,  is a drum that can’t keep pounding much longer.

Maybe they knew they would lose from the beginning.

“The muffled drums, the muffled dreams-” Everybody’s got the right to their dreams, but what if those dreams take away someone else’s? _What if those dreams are muffled for a reason?_

“So it’s now forgotten you!” the Balladeer screams.

Whatever shield that had kept the assassins from attacking them before breaks. _And they rise._

The country is singing its own lament, a dissonance that sounds more like sobs, a funeral march for the Balladeer.

“You know why I did it?” Byck says, stalking forward. “Because there isn’t any Santa Claus!”

“Where’s my prize?”

“And you forgot-” The Balladeer can’t breathe. They’ve never had to breathe before. But now, now the lungs that don’t exist are shrieking for air.

“What’s my prize?”

“How quick it heals-” Every step toward the Balladeer, like a march, like an army, is a hit. The Balladeer gasps in. Everything feels wrong.

_What is happening to them?_

“Promises and lies…”

“There’s a place-” the Balladeer sobs- “where you can make the lies come true-”

“Spread the word…”

“If you try-”

“Gotta spread the word.”

“That’s all you have to do.”

“Right, all you have to do….”

America cries. Every citizen, every president, every assassin- the anguish builds, the horror builds, all of it in a cacophony. The first people, slaughtered for the sake of riches and forgotten as the settlers cut them down with guns, with slavery, with smallpox; the battlefields of the Revolutionary War, red with blood and British soldiers as the country takes its freedom and nobody asks about the cost of freedom and nobody cleans the red; the thousands and thousands of slaves who were never taught the word _dream_ and whose spirits have been lashed away by whips and American entrepreneurship _;_ the immigrants who came to America thinking they would find paradise and instead find disease and desperation and hatred; the women who yell as loud as they can just for somebody to listen but who are still ignored and still told to stay in the kitchen and serve their husbands and let the men take charge; the people who are told that the way they were born is wrong and realize there’s nothing they can do to change it because this is who they are; the citizens who realize their country has elected someone who will hurt them more than they’ve already been hurt, who doesn’t care, who _doesn’t listen_.

Every single one cries, and the Balladeer weeps too, weeps because finally they realize that America doesn’t need the assassins to destroy it. The country has destroyed itself, and the assassins are the ones who know that already.

The assassins are the ones who try to fix it, the only way they know how.

They rip apart the Balladeer, the lie that can’t deceive any longer.

The country screams, as it always has, and the Balladeer opens their mouth and lets out their own wail.

The Balladeer dies screaming.

* * *

Lee Harvey Oswald is born screaming.

Months later, his first word is _John._ That’s his older half-brother’s name. Nobody thinks much of it.

As Lee grows, he forgets. But in that first year? He keeps screaming, and nobody listens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY SORRY IF YOU LIKE AMERICA OR WHATEVER BUT IT KIND OF SUCKS


	6. The Ballad of Oswald

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !VERY IMPORTANT PSA!  
>  PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE DON'T HURT OR KILL YOURSELF  
> LEE'S VIEWS ON SELF-HARM AND SUICIDE DO NOT IN ANY WAY REFLECT MY OWN  
> SUICIDE SHOULD NOT BE ROMANTICIZED. IT IS NOT 'BEAUTIFUL'. IT HURTS SO MANY PEOPLE AND CAN'T BE TAKEN LIGHTLY.  
> ANY ROMANTICIZATION OF SELF-HARM AND SUICIDE IN THIS CHAPTER IS THERE TO REFLECT LEE'S STATE OF MIND. PLEASE, IF YOU ARE FEELING OR THINKING LIKE THIS, TALK TO SOMEONE AND GET HELP.  
> YOU ARE AMAZING  
> YOU ARE WANTED  
> YOU ARE LOVED
> 
> OKAY END OF PSA
> 
> A few more things: I used some dialogue from the play, but changed the scene as it went on for timing and story reasons. So if you get to a part and were like: "yeah, I'm 99.9% sure that didn't happen", then that's why. 
> 
> This chapter is rated Mature for language and suicidal behavior and killing. It's also completely unedited. 
> 
> Also if you came for the gay here it is~

It is November 22nd, 1963. 

In the light just before dawn, Lee Harvey Oswald can pretend that he’s happy. 

Marina sleeps soundly beside him, and she’s beautiful, like marble, her hair ebony against the pillow. When she’s asleep, she doesn’t pummel him in sharp Russian with questions he doesn’t want to answer like  _ what is wrong with you  _ and  _ when will you be more than this.  _ She doesn’t remind him that June needs shoes or scream at him when he makes Rachel cry. She doesn’t look at him with a mixture of contempt and regret and fear, with a total absence of love. 

When his wife is sleeping, he can pretend she loves him. 

Normally he would lie here for hours, just pretending, until she woke up. He can’t sleep. He almost never can. 

But today is different. 

He rises in the half-darkness, dresses plainly. Puts 100 dollars and his wedding ring into the cup that Marina’s mother gave them as a wedding present, back when she was happy that her daughter was marrying an American. 

Then he hides his gun in his lunchbox, picks up the blanket of curtain rods Marina wanted him to get rid of, and takes the early bus to work. 

* * *

The Texas Book Depository is quiet when he arrives, the first rays of sun only just shining their way through the blinds of the sixth-floor windows.

Up here it’s just stacks and boxes. Lee comes here to get away from the other employees sometimes; they’re decent to him, but like everyone, they must be able to tell that something’s wrong, and it bothers him. People unconsciously shy away from Lee, on the streets, at work. Even his own family. The last time he saw Robert, his brother kept a safe distance. 

Catching his gaunt reflection in the glass of the window, Lee understands why. 

The radio is playing for some reason, the generic radio announcer’s voice tinny and piercing the quiet. It’s probably been on all night. Lee shuts it off. 

He sits on a box. Nothing seems real anymore, like he’s looking at it through a fishbowl. He stares down at his arms. There’s a few scattered freckles. There’s the scar on his wrist from when he attempted suicide in Moscow. 

In his lap is his lunchbox. He opens it. 

There’s the note he wrote for Marina, the one that he couldn’t bear to leave on the bedside table with the money and the ring, just in case she woke up early and realized he was gone. It’s written in Russian, with only his wife’s name in English so that when they find his body, they’ll know who to give it to. 

Under the folded-up paper is the gun. It’s small, and he holds it with shaky hands. Back in the Marines, Lee’s hands never shook. He qualified as a sharpshooter. But like everything else, he’s lost that by now. 

There’s no point in aiming, anyway, when the barrel rests against his head. 

He stares down at the gun, the thing that will take his life. The weapon should frighten him; instead he loves it, worships what it will bring him. 

There’s no noise on the sixth floor but Lee’s breathing. He’s oddly calm as he brings the gun to his temple. He doesn’t even feel his heart rate go up. 

Just one pull of his finger and-

“Excuse me. I was just browsing.” Someone speaks, a melodic, Southern voice, snapping Lee into reality. “Please, carry on with whatever you were-” Lee’s reflexes kick in, and he shoves the gun back in his lunchbox with a clatter. 

The man, who seemed to come out of the woodwork, stands there, his eyes moving between Lee and the lunchbox. 

Finally, points to the clock on the wall and says, “Is that the right time?” Lee doesn’t answer. “Yes?” 

He takes a pocketwatch out of his coat and flips it open. He’s dressed strangely. Way too fancy for 7:30 AM on a Friday. “I don’t know what the matter with this thing is. Excuse me for a moment.” The man crosses to the radio and switches it on. 

“-speaking to you from Love Field, where the President’s plane has just touched down and is taxiing toward us across the tarmac.” 

Lee stands, walking to the radio. 

“We understand the President intends to speak briefly here at the airport before proceeding into Dallas, where-” 

He punches the ‘off’ button with his finger. 

The voice of the man rings out across the room. “My dearest Marina, today I end my life so that yours can-” 

Lee bolts and grabs the note from the man’s hand, nearly tearing it in half. How does this guy even know how to read Russian, anyway? Who the fuck does he think he is? 

“I’m sorry, is that yours?” the man says, sounding not the least bit sorry. 

“Fuck you.” 

“We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot here. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t-” Lee snatches up his lunchbox, swerving to the door. “You’re not going, are you?” He keeps walking. “Don’t leave now. Come on, I didn’t mean to- Alek.” 

_ Alek.  _ Lee’s heart nearly stops, his body with it. He hears Marina’s voice, first laughing, then heavy with what Lee had once thought was love but he later realized was lust, and finally angry, sad, scared.  _ What's wrong with you? Stop this. Alek! _

“What did you call me?” It comes out more breath than speech. The hairs on the back of his neck are raised, his fingers tight around the handle of his lunchbox. 

“Alek,” the man says. “You used to like that nickname. Back in… Minsk. Marina said Lee sounded Chinese, so she called you Alek.” The words roll over Lee in a wave of terrifying truth.  “Of course,  I don't have to call you Alek. I just thought-”

Lee turns back around to face him. “How do you know what Marina called me?”

The man’s eyes flicker up to meet his for a second, and in them Lee catches something. Pity? 

Is his pain, dull but constant, really that obvious? 

Not that it would take a genius to know that Lee is miserable. This man walked in on him about to shoot himself. 

“I know lots about you, Lee,” the man says. “Let’s see…” 

And he rattles off Lee’s entire life. Every failure, every regret. But it’s the things he used to love, the things that once brought him happiness, that hurt the most. His mother. The Soviet Union. Marina. June. Rachel. 

“And this morning, depressed over your estrangement from a wife who views you as a dismal and pathetic failure, you rose before dawn, kissed your sleeping children goodbye, put your last hundred dollars and your wedding ring into a demitasse cup which Marina’s mother gave you as a wedding present, and came here to kill yourself…” 

Lee can’t take it. “Who are you?” 

The man regards him. “I'm your friend, Lee.”

“I don't have friends.”

“I  _ was  _ your friend, once. At least, you thought I was.” 

Lee doesn’t remember being interrogated by this one, and he thinks he’d remember this man’s face by its youth and handsomeness, but that must be what this is. They’ve tapped his house again. How they saw what he was doing, or why the FBI is interrupting his suicide, he doesn’t know, but Lee won’t let them get away with it. 

“Show me your badge,” he says. 

“My what?”

“You bastards think you’re so smart. I know my rights. You try to interrogate me at my place of business- I can sue you for harassment. I can-”

“You think I’m with the FBI,” the man chuckles. 

“I have a right to see your badge.”

“Search me, Lee. You think I’ve got a badge. Come on, search me.” He laughs, holding out his arms like he’s offering Lee a dare. Lee takes it. The man is strangely warm to the touch, even through layers of clothing, like he radiates fire. “The FBI. You really love those morons, don’t you? Hell, why wouldn’t you? No one else cares if you live or die, those guys can’t get enough of you.” There’s no badge. Lee turns, walks away. 

“How was your day, Lee? Sell any secrets to the Soviets? Sabotage any defense plans? Kick off your shoes and tell us all about it!”

“Fuck you, whoever you are,” Lee says. 

“Lee. I’m sorry, Lee. It’s just so sad… I mean, it’s all you ever wanted. Isn’t it?” Against his better judgement, Lee looks back at the man, leaves himself vulnerable for attack. “Someone who won’t leave you alone.” The man takes a step forward. “Someone who wants to hear about your day. Someone,  _ anyone-  _ your mother. Mother Russia. The Marines. Your wife, Marina.”

Lee tries to look away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

The man has gotten close to Lee; his eyes travel Lee’s face like he’s studying it, memorizing it. His eyes are two jewels, finer than Lee’s wedding ring. 

“What do you want, Lee?” He says it softly. The air is charged with those words. 

Impulsively, Lee takes a step forward. The inches between him and this man shrink; their faces level. He starts out angry. “You know so much…” the corner of the man’s mouth turns up and Lee forgets how to breathe for just a second. He recovers. “Why don’t you tell me?” 

Eye contact has suddenly become painful, a fire starting in the other man’s eyes, but Lee can’t look away. 

“You want what everybody wants,” the man says. “To be appreciated. To be valued. To be in other people’s thoughts.” The man takes Lee’s wrist, pulls him forward, and Lee is helpless to resist. “For them to think of you and smile.” 

His hand reaches up, touches Lee’s cheek, softer than Lee’s mother, kinder than Marina. Lee shivers and involuntarily leans into the contact. He hates that he likes it, hates the way he hungers for this affection. He’s always hated it; hated the way he clung to Marina in pathetic desperation, pleading with her to love him, hated how he would watch his mother’s eyes for any sign that she loved the boy he was, not the boy she wanted him to be. 

“You want someone to love you, Lee,” the man says, almost gentle with his words. “Right?” He leans in so that his breath brushes Lee’s cheek. “Isn’t that it?” Their faces are only centimeters apart, an infinitesimal distance. “Lee?” 

He’s got trust issues and chronic paranoia, yet he’s letting this happen. This man doesn’t feel like a stranger. More like a memory that Lee can’t quite recall, a song he was sung as a child, the tune, stuck in his head though he can’t quite get that one note. Like rightness, like home. 

Lee’s eyes flutter shut. Every hair on his body stands upright; he feels the little brush of the man’s fingers on his face, feels his mask being removed, drinks in the heat, the fire of this strange being. It makes him  _ not _ numb, thaws every emotion he’s forgotten how to feel and sets them all loose in his chest, where his heart gives a wild thump-thump. 

“Yes,” he breathes. 

The man’s touch leaves Lee. He takes a step back, and Lee watches his pupils shrink to pinpricks in his irises. 

“Forget it.” 

All the air leaves Lee’s lungs; all that’s left is the sound of his heartbeat in his ears. 

“What?” 

“It’s never going to happen. It’s a fantasy. You’ve got to give it up.” 

“I'm going to kill myself,” he says. He's shaking, and cold once again. Ashamed of the spell he fell under. “Don't you think I  _ have  _ given up?”

“No,” the man says. “I think that's how you think you're gonna get it.” His voice changes into a mockery of Lee’s. “ _ When I'm dead they'll be sorry. When I'm dead they’ll realize how much they loved me.”   _ Lee turns away from him, his cheeks burning. _ “  _ When you close your eyes you probably see the funeral, don’t you, Lee? A gentle rain is falling. Everyone has umbrellas-”

“Shut up.” 

“There’s Marina, weeping quietly.” She would wish for him back, regret that she’d never shown him love. Kiss his dead forehead and let her tears fall freely on his face. “Your sobbing children clutching at her skirts.” His daughters, not crying because they’re scared of him but because they miss him. “Your mom.” She’d scream, beg to be buried with him, and Lee’s brothers would barely be able to hold her back through their own tears. “Your dad.” Alive. “Every boss who ever fired you-”

“Shut the _ fuck _ up!” 

The man shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Lee. It’s just so  _ childish.  _ It’s so dumb-”

Hopelessness wells up within Lee. He doesn’t know why he cares about the opinion of this stranger, doesn’t know why any of this makes a dent. He hasn’t been able to feel in so long, and yet here it all is: his anger, his frustration, his despair. All of it brought out in the presence of a man he’s never met. 

“You think it’s dumb?” he says. “If I shouldn’t kill myself then what should I do? Go home? Beg her to take me back? Plead with her? Beat her up?”  

“You tried all that,” the man says. “It doesn’t work.” 

Lee snaps, letting his voice raise, break. “I know it doesn’t work! So tell me what I  _ should  _ do!” 

There’s a moment of silence, where Lee lets his eyes meet the other man’s again. Like a fly in a spiderweb, he’s trapped. He breathes raggedly; the stranger’s chest rises and falls as well. 

The man’s voice hums with a new intensity, every syllable passing his lips like he’s tasting it. 

“You should kill the President of the United States.” 

It doesn’t make sense at first. Lee turns that sentence over in his mind again; it still doesn’t make sense. 

“What?” 

“His plane landed at the airport fifteen minutes ago,” the man says. “He’s coming into town to make a speech. His motorcade is going to go right past that window-” he points to it with an unwavering finger “-when it does, you shoot him.” 

_ Kill the President.  _ That’s insane. This whole thing is insane. Lee tries to shake out of it.  _ Kill the President.  _ He doesn’t want to kill anyone, anyone but himself.  _ Kill the President.  _ Even if he tried, it would be impossible-

Why would he try? 

Why does the idea, when presented to him by this… madman… sound like a good one? 

“Who are you?” Lee says. He takes a shaky step back. He’s scared by how much his body protests to it. “And I- I want the truth. None of that ‘I’m your fr-friend’ bullshit.” 

The man smiles at him. A dangerous smile. “You want the truth? Okay, I’m not lying.” He takes a step forward, to make up for the space Lee created between them. “My name is John Wilkes Booth, Lee.” 

The name sparks a memory. A flashback to high school history, back to the time that Lee let everything go in one ear and come out the other because he was counting down the days to his seventeenth birthday when he could drop out. This one fact stayed, and he doesn’t know how or why. 

“John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln,” he says, then- “Oh, God.  _ Fuck.”  _  He rubs a hand over his eyes, as if that will fix anything. “That’s it. I’m crazy, I’m insane-” 

The man- John Wilkes Booth _ \-  _ catches his arm. 

“You’re not crazy, Lee,” he says. 

Lee tries to pull out of his grip. “You’re not  _ real. _ ” 

“You want proof?” Booth pulls Lee’s hand forward, resting it flat on his chest. “My heart is beating.” Through layers of clothing, Lee feels it- strong, slightly irregular. “I’m breathing.” He is. “I’m every bit as alive and real as you are, and I think you know that.”

“This is insane,” Lee breathes. “Kill the President? How is that going to help?” He pushes away from Booth and the window, not letting himself look at either of them any longer. “And even if I tried- even if I  _ wanted  _ to- I’m on the sixth floor! What am I supposed to do, throw schoolbooks at him?” 

Booth sounds amused. “What’s in the blanket?” 

“Curtain rods,” Lee says, watching his fingers shake. 

“Are you sure?” 

“Sure? I’m sure. Marina wanted me to take them-” 

John Wilkes Booth appears next to him, holding out a rifle. 

Lee freezes. 

“You have everything you need, Lee,” Booth says. “to change everything.” 

Lee doesn’t take the rifle. 

“You can-”

“Why don’t you just leave me alone?” Lee says. “Let me die. Get someone else to murder Kennedy. It doesn’t matter.” 

Booth’s knuckles turn white on the rifle. “I  _ can’t get _ someone else to assassinate John F. Kennedy, Lee. It has to be you.” 

“Why?!” Lee shouts. 

Booth’s stance changes. His grip loosens on the rifle; he sets it down, flexing out his fingers. He once again lessens the distance between him and Lee. 

“You feel small, don’t you?” Booth says. “Insignificant. Unimportant.” 

“Yes.” Lee says. “Fine. Yes. No one cares about me. My life is a failure. Tell me something I don’t know.” 

“Right here, right now, you are the most important person in the universe. Most of us don’t matter- but you, Lee? You don’t belong here. You don’t belong with the rest of these nobodies, and you’ve known it since the moment you were born. You’re bigger than this.” 

Booth smiles. Lee doesn’t know the last time someone smiled at him,  _ truly  _ smiled. 

“I’m not lying,” he says. 

“I don’t believe you.” Lee turns away, crosses the room to the window. It’s slightly open; he can hear the roar of the crowd, screaming to the President things he will never hear. Even though thousands of people yell at once, it’s a faint noise, as if coming to Lee through a filter, or a sheet that has been thrown over everything besides him and John WIlkes Booth. 

All of them down there are so small. Every person in that crowd is a freckle on the face of a country who chooses to cover them up. Lee has never even been a mark. 

“Do I look to you like a liar, Lee?” Booth says. 

“I don’t know.” Lee says. He doesn’t turn around. His reflection is visible in the window. He looks hopeless; his eyes are dead in their sockets and his face looks like it isn’t capable of ever smiling again. 

Booth is reflected, too. Even in the glass of a window he seems to burn, to run on passion more than oxygen. 

“Would I lie to you about this?” 

“Everyone lies to me.” Lee doesn’t know he’s saying it out loud until he hears himself. “I don’t think a single person has ever told me the truth-” 

He breaks off when a sob rises in his throat, one he didn’t know was coming. He clenches his hands into fists. 

“You want them to see you. To give you the life you deserve. To  _ listen _ ,” Booth says. “If you shoot the President, you can have that all. Marina will regret ever leaving you- the Marines will wonder what they did wrong- even the Soviets will regret their treatment of you- your mother will wish she’d been better, loved you more or loved you less- people will love you and hate you and listen to you and you’ll have everything you ever wanted-” 

“I don’t know what I want!” Lee says. Or maybe screams. He doesn’t know anymore. 

He punches the wall next to the window, disavowing the pain it causes him. He hurts so much already it doesn’t matter what’s added. “All I know-” he sobs, “is that Marina hates me. That I should stop hitting her but I… I don’t know how. I don’t know how to make anything right. Rachel only cries when I hold her. I’m twenty-four years old and everything,  _ everything  _ I’ve ever tried to do has failed.” 

He falls to his knees. His knuckle is bleeding; he holds it to his chest. 

“There’s something wrong with me,” he says. “Shooting the President won’t fix that. Nothing will fix that.” 

There is silence. 

Booth kneels next to him. With a surprising gentleness, he reaches for Lee’s injured hand. Runs his thumb over the scraped knuckles in a way that makes Lee shiver. 

He  looks up. John Wilkes Booth wipes the tears from Lee’s face. The air between them burns. 

“Maybe it will,” Booth says. 

“How could it?” Lee blinks, feeling the tears drop off his eyelashes. 

“America did this to you, Lee.” Booth’s hand hasn’t left Lee’s face, still clearing away the tears that won’t stop. “This whole country is broken. That’s why you tried to escape to the Soviet Union; you saw it. America likes to lie that it’s perfect, and Americans like to believe that. But really this country is tearing apart at the seams, and it has been since before it was even a country.” 

“So what, you want me to make things worse?” Lee’s breaths are shallow. “You want me to break it all the way?” 

“No,” John Wilkes Booth says. “No. The people who assassinate presidents, Lee- they don’t want to break America. They want to fix it. When I killed Lincoln, it wasn’t about  _ him _ . It wasn’t about  _ fame.  _ I did it for my country.” 

“And people hate you for it,” Lee says. “They’ll hate  _ me  _ for it.” 

“History paints us as the villains, Lee. But we know the truth.” Booth’s other hand rests on Lee’s chest, over his heart. “You feel all that hurt inside of you? You can make America feel all of it. You can make the  _ world _ feel all of it. You can make people think that the planet’s come off its axis, that everything has cracked, that they’re gonna die, and you know what? That’s what fixes things. Not presidents. Not governments. Pain. Pain is what makes them all realize that something’s gone wrong, and they’re gonna do anything to make it go away.” 

Lee’s heart pounds. Booth takes a few deep breaths. When he speaks again, it’s quieter. Barely more than a whisper. 

“Yes, most of them will hate you. You will cause grief and chaos and despair. You will demolish the world as you know it.” John Wilkes Booth looks at Lee and his face is made of something like hope, but different. “But you can’t build something strong and new and beautiful without tearing the old one down.” 

By now Lee’s stopped crying. John Wilkes Booth hasn’t stopped stroking his thumb across Lee’s cheek. 

Their foreheads touch, and something inside him, deep, unknown, seems to purr at the contact. Like  _ this  _ is what he, or some part of him, wants. 

“It’s your choice,” John Wilkes Booth says. “But I have seen the future, Lee, and you are it.” 

It’s a choice. Only it’s not much of a choice at all. 

“John?” Lee says. 

John’s eyes change at his name. Like the way Lee says it brings something back. 

“Yes?” he says. 

“I want to,” Lee says. “I want to shoot the President.” 

The touch between them is broken as John leaves, standing to get the rifle. Lee stands as well, his legs unsteady, and takes the gun. 

His grip isn’t what it used to be, and his hands shake. He stares down at this- he won’t hit the President. This is over before it begins. 

“Here,” John says. He guides Lee to the window, still gentle, soft with his movement. 

With almost loving care, he positions Lee. One hand rests on Lee’s wrist, steadying him, grounding him, while the other points out the window. 

“All you have to do is move your little finger,” he says. Lee’s hands stop shaking. Everything focuses in. All he can see is the rifle, and through that, his target- just a centimeter more, and he’ll have done it. All he can hear is John Wilkes Booth- “ _ Just squeeze your little finger, you can change the _ -” 

_ Click.  _

_ Bang.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was supposed to be the end.  
> But I already wrote more.  
> HELP ME
> 
> (how terrible was that on a scale from 1-10? I wrote most of it in a haze and didn't edit at all) (I will probably come back to this and edit it when I'm less tired but for now I just wanted to post it) 
> 
> please comment your thoughts, feels, unanswered questions, etc. I really, really like comments ok when I get comments it makes my entire day


	7. All Things Must Die

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *evil laugh* I SAID I'D BE BACK *cackles* LEEHN HARVILKES OSWOOTH IS SAILING 
> 
> alternate ship names: Leeth, Jalik (or Jalek because I spelled it like 'Alek' in this story since that was how it was spelled on Lee's fake ID), Booswald, Bloswald, Oswooth, Boothadeer, Balladooth, Johnadeer, Lohn, Jee, Bee... 
> 
> also what the frickety frack is this chapter  
> it's not like the play (it goes so far off canon omg and the characters are kinda ooc like would lee actually cry all the time idk and booth just acts weird as hell) but it hasn't gone into full trash fanfic mode either. it's all emotional and shit and lee has all the balladeer's feels but doesn't know it so he's like 'hey i love u after knowing u for an hour' just wow what is this  
> lee,, can you please chill,, for like one second
> 
> it's been awhile so I kinda recommend re-reading at least chapter six??? but there's a lot of ch.4 references so ;)))
> 
> last note: pls don't look for a relationship like this IRL it's not healthy ok thx

Everything is silent in that moment. 

Not really. 

In reality there’s chaos. Bystanders weep in the middle of the street. Jacqueline Kennedy screams. All around the world, something just breaks, in people, in families. There’s no loneliness in this grief, but people feel alone. And they cry out for anyone to listen. 

But on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository, Lee Harvey Oswald doesn’t hear any of it. Time is frozen in that second, a breath’s-worth of time stretched into many. 

Out the window, he sees his bullet hit Kennedy in the head. 

Lee’s never killed anyone, but he knows how to. That’s a fatal shot. 

“I killed the President,” he whispers. 

The words don’t make sense, so he says them again, louder. 

“I killed the President.” 

He imagines the way his mother’s face will crumple when she hears, how she’ll curl in a ball, telling herself it isn’t true, it isn’t true, her Lee, her baby boy, couldn’t do this, how she’ll finally regret the way she treated him and beg to trade anything, everything, just to have him back again. How Marina’s friend Ruth will translate to her the news and she’ll scream in front of the children and she won’t be able to stop crying and remembering all the times she told him to go out and make something of himself and wishing she’d been happy with the life they had before, wondering if this is her fault. 

Nobody will ever think of Lee and smile. His name will be synonymous with  _ traitor, assassin, killer.  _ He has ruined his life and the lives of everyone around him. 

He doesn’t feel anything as he thinks this. His family’s pain doesn’t bring about his own. His future legacy doesn’t give him regret. Everything within him is still. Maybe it’s finally fixed, or maybe it’s so broken that it’s stopped trying. 

All that’s there is that one fact:  _ I killed the President.  _

Until something moves. 

John Wilkes Booth lets go of him. 

The sense of stillness that overcame Lee disappears, flies away with the release of John’s hand. 

He sets down the rifle mechanically, then turns. 

“You’re leaving,” he says. 

The words come out of him hollow, yet so, so afraid. 

“I have to,” John says. “I can’t stay.” 

“You can’t  _ leave _ ,” Lee says. 

“I’m sorry, Lee,” he says. He actually does look sorry, sad, even, putting distance between the two of them. “But our time is up.” 

He holds up his hand. Lee realizes with a jolt that it’s transparent, a ghost’s hand; John’s fingers are dissipating like smoke. As Lee watches, his cheeks grow hollow, and his eyes lose life. His hair grows heavy as if wet, but until a drop of red rolls down John’s temple, Lee doesn’t realize it’s blood. 

“I’m dead,” John says. “I have been for ninety-eight years. The President’s been shot; my work is done. I have to go, Lee.” 

“Okay,” 

Lee’s body moves like a puppet, being controlled by a greater power inside himself that he isn’t even aware of. He walks, calmly, he thinks, to his lunch pail, abandoned. Opens it. Takes out his handgun. Stares down the barrel and brings it dangerously close to his head. 

“Take me too.” Lee says. 

He hears John’s sharp intake of air. The next thing he knows, the gun is being wrenched from his hand. Apparently, John is still solid enough to touch. 

“I killed the fucking  _ President, _ ” Lee says, anger rushing back through him. “I’ll be executed anyway.” 

“Just because  _ my _ work is done doesn’t mean that yours is.” Lee tries to turn away but John drops the gun with a clatter and grabs his face in both hands. A shiver runs through Lee even at that contact. “Lee, you can do so much. You can change the country. But if you die now, this will all have been for nothing.” 

“I already killed him.” Lee sinks- his legs feel suddenly done, his whole body overcome with an inescapable fatigue. This whole thing is so ridiculous- so otherworldly, and he keeps thinking that any second he’s going to wake up next to Marina and this whole thing will have been some crazy fever dream. But if it is, this is the most lifelike dream he’s ever had. John’s face is drawn in incredible detail. His hand feels real, and he burns with passion, with life. The hammering in Lee’s chest, his heart beating itself senseless against his ribs, is the most painfully alive sensation he’s ever felt.  

“I killed the President,” he says again. He stares up, into the bright, bright eyes of the man who convinced him to murder, and in this second he knows he could be convinced again. All John would have to do is point and Lee would get the rifle. He’d kill an entire town. Just shoot, and shoot, and shoot, if John Wilkes Booth told him to. He hates that. 

John seems oblivious to Lee’s inner turmoil. “Do you know who Leon Czolgosz is?” he says, in the ‘I’m about to make a point that will change your mind’ tone. 

“No,” Lee says. 

“I thought so. He shot William McKinley. But no one knows his name. History knows that he did it- no question. History knows  _ why  _ he did it.” 

John takes Lee’s shoulders, and his fingers grip so tight that they will leave bruises. 

“If you shoot yourself now, they’ll find your suicide note. ‘My dearest Marina…” John speaks the words like they disgust him. “The name Lee Harvey Oswald will be plastered across the news for what, a week? They won’t care about you after that. You’re just some depressed madman who happened to be in the right place at the right time. You don’t have a  _ cause _ . All they’ll do is mourn their President. You know what keeps you famous? What makes this assassination the biggest since Lincoln? The mystery. The questions. The things they can’t logically explain.” 

_ Okay,  _ Lee thinks.  _ Fine. I’ll stay alive if that’s what you want so fucking much.  _

But then John lets go of him and he violently questions his life choices. 

Lee lunges, taking a fistful of John’s jacket and holding on as tight as he can so that John won’t leave. It’s stupid. When he tried to hold on to Marina, it just ripped the sleeve of her dress. She left anyway. 

Still he- 

“I can’t,” Lee says. “I can’t stay.” He hates himself and the way he’s been reduced to a wretched, helpless creature, unable even to stand. “I came here to die. And now you’re leaving and…” he breaks off, pushing back the wave of despair that comes out of nowhere, that crests within him. What the fuck is he so desperate for, anyway?

John turns back to him, not even fazed, just calm, distinguished, and now Lee feels even more pathetic, even more- no, he can’t do this. 

“Lee,” John says with a strange tone. “You met me today.” However obvious the statement is, it’s tinged with doubt. 

“I know,” Lee says. “I know, I-” He doesn’t know. “I killed the President,” he says. “I killed him for you. And- and-” The weight of all of this is finally registering and Lee’s vision spins, horror colliding with his desperation and a small bit of rightness that remains from the moment right when the bullet hit. 

He was right. Shooting the President didn’t fix him at all. It messed him up even more. And it won’t fix the country and it won’t make them listen and they won’t say they’re sorry. John was lying to him, and Lee believed it easily,  _ wanted  _ to believe there was something that could make this all stop. 

Yet, even realizing the lie,  if Lee  was given the choice to go back, to say no to John Wilkes Booth, he’d still end up with that gun in his hands. 

All it took-  _ all it fucking took to get him to kill a country _ \- was the way John looked at him when Lee cried. The way he wiped away Lee’s tears and made him feel warm, safe, not alone. Finally, not alone. Finally, for one moment, Lee had felt not wrong. 

And now, even though he’s broken, even though he’s done something truly horrible, he still doesn’t feel wrong. Just John’s presence completes him in a way that’s bigger than Lee, much too complicated for him to understand. 

“You can’t leave,” Lee says. “I can’t go back to the way I was before.  _ Fuck _ , I can’t. Everyone leaves… you know they do. Marina-” and then he’s crying again because he doesn’t know how to say how he feels because he doesn’t know  _ how _ he feels. Nothing makes sense anymore, least of all how John leaving him would hurt as much as Marina, hurt more. How he’s sick with skewed emotions, and that he thought he loved his wife, but his feelings for Marina were on the skin level and now he’s been shot in the heart. 

“Lee. Lee, look at me. Listen to me.” 

John pulls Lee’s chin up so that they’re face-to-face. Lee tries to turn away, but of course it’s no use.  _ Fuck,  _ he thinks. 

“Lee, you have to calm down.” John’s voice, while in concept is soothing and unfazed, quivers a bit. It’s the uncertainty that hurts Lee even more. The chance that maybe, maybe John cares about him, just a little bit. Marina was always scared when he cried, but John just sounds sad. Like he  _ understands.  _ “Lee?” And his name.  _ Lee. _ It’s another weapon, another way to bend him, Lee knows it. “You have to breathe.” 

He just shakes his head.  _ Breathing won’t fix this,  _ he thinks.  _ Nothing will fix this.  _

“You did it.” John says, like he’s trying to be comforting. “You killed the President. That’s what’s important, Lee.  _ That’s what’s important _ \- even if people leave you, you did what you needed to do and you were  _ perfect _ and you have made your mark- now things can get better-” 

“No!” Lee shouts, surprising himself. But even as he reels from the outburst, he realizes. He gets it. “No,” he repeats, standing stronger, pulling away. “They’re not going to get better. Yeah, I killed Kennedy, but that doesn’t fix things. That’s not what I care about! I didn’t come here trying to kill the President; I came here to kill myself, and you know why? Because I’m broken, and I’m hurting everyone around me. What I care about is people, John. Fucking  _ people.  _ Not ‘bringing down a tyrant’. Not ‘the country’.” 

He doesn’t even know where these words are coming from, just that something deep inside him needs to say them. He shakes with his own passion. He steps forward, a strength pulsing through him that he didn’t even know could exist. 

“I don’t know what’s happened to you to make you have so little empathy, so little caring for  _ human beings,  _ but I’m not like you,” he says. “I don’t enjoy the romance of lost causes. At least  _ I _ know when something is too broken to be fixed. I came here with a gun because I wanted to make sure my kids are gonna be okay. I wanted Marina to be okay. And I shot Kennedy because I thought for a second it would help. Not for revenge, not to hurt people, not to  _ fix _ people.” Lee laughs, one biting, honest sound. “I know I’m a lost cause- I know that America is a lost cause- and I’m not going to fool myself with delusions that I can change that.”

John doesn’t even try to rebuff. He seems frozen in shock. His eyes travel all over Lee’s face, as if he’s trying to decipher something, trying to read Lee. 

Lee’s tone softens, just a bit. 

“Maybe you understood that, once.” He eyes the blood staining the hair of John’s ghost, the wound that could only come from a gunshot to the head. “Maybe you finally saw that this country is not what it was and it never can be again. Maybe you realized that you being here was only hurting people, like I did. But now- now you’ve pushed that away. You’ve lied so much that you’ve managed to lie to yourself.” He jabs one finger into John’s chest. “And now you’re hollow in there. You’re not human anymore.  Do you really feel anything besides the desire to kill presidents and make people suffer and bring about the death of hope? God, I want you to. I wish you’d stop thinking about causes and ideas for one second and remember _ people. _ ” 

John looks like he’s just been shot but trying to hide it. That isn’t anguish, but something like it. 

“Balladeer?” The way John says this, a weird desperation clawing the syllables, sends an unprecedented shiver down Lee’s spine. Stirs the same thing within him that awoke during his rant. 

“ _ What _ ?” Lee says. 

“You’re not-” John says. “You’re Lee.” 

“Yes,” Lee says. “You’re fading.” 

It’s true- sunlight shines right through John. He looks down at his hands, completely transparent. 

“That I am,” he says, then, more thoughtfully. “It isn’t a choice.” 

“What do you mean?” 

John looks up at Lee. Either he’s gotten to be even better at acting, or he really does care. 

“I know what it’s like when people leave,” he says. “When they run out on you and leave you to die.” Lee holds their eye contact, until John looks down again with a pained expression. “Damnit, Lee. I-” 

Then he does something unexpected. John opens his arms, and Lee doesn’t think before stepping into the embrace. 

Lee closes his eyes and lets himself be held by a barely-solid being, breathes deep and realizes that his entire life he’s been wanting this. 

“I do,” John says into Lee’s hair. “Feel things. I think. I want to.” 

“Stay,” Lee says. “You can.” 

“I can’t.” 

“Why not?” Lee says. 

“Well,” John says, separating them to look at Lee. “All things must die.” 

He takes Lee’s face and kisses him, very softly, on the lips, but before Lee can even understand what’s happening it’s over. 

“Goodbye, Lee,” John says. 

And the image of him breaks apart and disappears. 

Lee presses a hand to his mouth. He stares at the place where John Wilkes Booth disappeared. He tries to make sense of everything that’s happened, but it’s just a series of contradictions. 

“Damn you,” he says to an empty room.

The world is coming to life outside. Screams float through the window. 

Lee killed the President. And now, he guesses, he’ll pay the price for that act. 

Still, if he could go back, not kill Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald wouldn’t. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wtf even was that ((a big mess (like Lee Harvey Oswald amiright))  
> also  
> you can't tell I was listening to Heathers at all  
> also  
> chapter 4 parallels  
> also  
> s o m e o n e p l e a s e s h o o t m e
> 
> nika or mia if ur reading this u can do it  
> get ur guns from hen  
> hunt me down in school  
> i w e l c o m e d e a t h


	8. What Do You Want?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The alternate title for this chapter was John Wilkes Booth the Angsty Gay the same way the alternate title for the previous chapter was Lee Harvey Oswald the Angsty Gay. This makes sense because I am also an Angsty Gay and that is what I like to read and write about. 
> 
> This wasn't meant to be so long (5000 words WHAT) but when I get into JWB's POV then I wordvomit because he is the kind of person who thinks way too much and also I got carried away with Sara Jane Moore because I love Sara Jane Moore a whole lot
> 
> Reminder that I don't support who any of the assassins were or what they believed in real life. I just like writing about them as characters. (don't be killers/crazy people/racists/moms who point guns at their kids, kids!) 
> 
> translations of the Russian in this chapter are in the end notes (i used Google Translate so i probably did a shitty job) 
> 
> sorry if JWB is out of character (I'm like 89% sure he is) i just... really like how i wrote him in this chapter... so i'm not changing it
> 
> Now on with the most fanfiction-y chapter in this whole fanfiction

John Wilkes Booth arrives back in the Proprietor’s bar feeling both everything and nothing at all. Everyone is reduced to colors and shapes and sounds- a bearded Charles Guiteau says, “He’s back!”, a kaleidoscope Lynette Fromme says, “It was perfect!”, a tiny Giuseppe Zangara says, “ _Ben fatto!_ ”.

And there’s the Proprietor, emerging from the sea of assassins who all watched John create the greatest assassination of all, and the Proprietor smiles a big devil’s-grin and says, “That was your best performance yet, Booth.”

John suddenly feels sick. He’s impressed with himself that he remembers what sick feels like, after so many years of nothing. But this does make him feel sick.

Fromme laughs a high-pitched laugh. “Yeah,” she says. “He believed it so much that he begged you to stay! _Don’t leave me! You’re the only thing I have left!_ ” She collapses in a fit of giggles.

“That was my favorite part,” Moore says, smiling at Fromme. “I love when people beg _me_ to stay.”

Byck slaps his back. “Hey, _I_ thought you cared. You’re one hell of an actor, kid.”

“This is great!” Guiteau says. “Look, even _he’s_ smiling.”

Czolgosz rearranges his features back into a not-smile, but he still has a happy glow in his eyes. All the assassins have this air about them, like they rule the world now.

“Best of my generation,” John says, to Byck. There’s a lump in his throat that won’t go away. “Though I do like a challenge.”

They all laugh. He closes his eyes and sees Lee’s tearstained face. And then he sees the Balladeer reaching out a hand to him and the Balladeer dying. And it hurts, so he opens his eyes and laughs with them. His family.

The assassins have at last won. All the sacrifices, all the blood spilled, has finally made a difference, _finally_ made America listen. The Balladeer was wrong. _Lee was wrong._

John looks up, and catches the Proprietor looking at him. He expects the Proprietor to smile, or wink, or something else congratulatory. But instead he gets a- well, not glare, exactly- but what looks like a threat in facial expression form.

And he thinks back to those last few moments with Lee, the way it felt like something was trying to tear him away, get him out because he’d overstayed his visit.

The Proprietor was pulling John back. The Proprietor knows he didn’t want to leave. (Because, deep down inside of him, John is aware that pretending he cared about Lee wasn’t that big of a challenge).

John doesn’t know why the thought of that makes him so uneasy.

* * *

“What was he like?” Hinckley asks.

Celebration has broken out within the bar. All the assassins feel stronger now, happier. Byck and Guiteau have somehow gotten Czolgosz to drink, and now the three are sitting in a corner, completely wasted. Moore and Fromme lay on top of one another, consumed in another fit of giggles. Zangara is eating- “The stomach not hurt!” he’d cried out before, and such an innate joy had come over him that even the most  humanity-hating assassin (Byck) had smiled.

John Wilkes Booth used to love parties. Parties loved him. But now he just wants to be quiet, and alone. Hinckley sitting down next to him and twattering on doesn’t help.

“What?” John says.

“Lee Harvey Oswald.” Hinckley’s expression gains admiration. He takes a gulp of Coke before continuing. “Like, what was it like being near him? It must’ve been really cool.”

“You saw it.” John tries to close himself off again but Hinckley is like an excited puppy, jumping up on his hind legs and trying to climb up onto John’s pants.

“Yeah, but like… how did he shoot? And were his hands warm? And how did he smell?”

John puts a hand over his eyes. “I wasn’t paying attention to how he smelled.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah, you probably weren’t. But… wow. Just wow. You got to touch him. I'd give anything to touch Lee Harvey Oswald- just once, you know. God, he looked sadder than I expected, though. I kind of thought he was like… angry and tough looking but instead he was all… yeah, sad. Just really-” Hinckley stops, as if in contemplation. “Did you know he was gonna be so-”

“Could you leave me alone?” John says. He's trying to have patience. He's really trying. “Please?”

“Why?”

“Because I'm tired,” he says. It’s not a lie.

“You're dead, though. Do you get tired?” Hinckley smiles sheepishly and shrugs. “I’m in here out of the mental hospital- I don’t know what it’s like to be dead.”

A part of John wants to say, _how’d you like to know?,_ but instead he takes a very large sip of alcohol, which is probably not the best choice.

“I wrote him a song,” Hinckley says. “Lee Harvey Oswald, I mean. But then Fromme broke my guitar. She’s such a bully. It was called: You Can Change the World. The song, I mean. She smashed it on the bar when I got to the chorus. The guitar. So I didn’t get to see one part- like, the middle. I was trying to clean up my guitar.”

And suddenly it’s all too much for John. He’s done. He puts his head down on the bar, feels his forehead dig into the cold wood. Tries not to remember how it felt with his forehead pressed to Lee’s, right before Lee called him by name (the way the Balladeer used to) (Lee is not the goddamn Balladeer) and said he _wanted_ to shoot Kennedy. No, he is not thinking about it. He’s just resting his head on the counter. Because he’s tired.

Hinckley trails off from whatever nonsense he’s been spouting. “Hey, man, you okay?”

“Yes,” John growls, “I’m perfect. Thank you for asking.”

“Are you sure? Cause you look kinda… sad-”

“Why would I be sad?” John says. “Everything is finally going the way it’s supposed to. I got everything I wanted. We all did.”

He stretches out his fingers as far as they can go (he touched Lee’s face with this hand, wiped away wayward tears, the way the Balladeer once stood in front of John with warm hands and cleared the tears from _his_ cheeks) (but he isn’t thinking about that) (no, definitely not). He clenches his hand into a fist. It shakes. This index finger is also the one he used to pull the trigger when he killed Lincoln. More important things.

“Hey, I-” Hinckley starts, but just then someone shouts, “Hinckley! You owe me 20 bucks!” from across the bar and finally, finally, that stupid boy leaves John in peace.

He is happy.

(He is supposed to be happy).

Kennedy is dead. (America is dead). The lives of everyone here have been given meaning now. They’ve come full circle with the thing that John started and the country has been righted again.

He’s trying to sit there, alive with the knowledge that his cause has succeeded, that everything he’s worked for, that he’s given up his life for, has come to fruition.

But he grows restless far too soon.

The other assassins watched him talking to Lee _somehow_.

* * *

John finds their window after a bit of searching.

It’s a literal window, not unlike the one Lee shot Kennedy through, only larger. And through it, like they are separated only by glass, he sees Lee.

Lee’s in a cell. That’s the first thing John notices: that he’s locked up. So Lee didn’t run. John can’t pretend he’s surprised. There’s too much of the Balladeer still left within Lee to know that he could have hope of escape.

The second thing John notices is that Lee is sleeping, curled in around himself in the cell’s uncomfortable-looking cot. His face is bruised, the side of his mouth swollen. He looks cold. They didn’t give him a blanket. He’s just laying there with his knees close to his chest, and his shoulderblades visible through the thin fabric of his shirt, shivering. His shirt has spots of blood on it: is it Lee’s? Is it someone else’s? It looks out of place there, on the white.

When Lee is awake he looks much older than his twenty-four years, too tired and beaten-down for his age, already married with two children, already having failed all his life’s aspirations. Awake, he is Lee Harvey Oswald, depressed loner, presidential assassin.

But sleeping, Lee becomes the Balladeer. His brow un-puckers, smooths in the escape from the anxiety that plagues Lee’s waking hours. His lips are parted slightly, as if ready to sing a tender note of understanding. He looks younger than twenty-four, but wiser, as well.

Some unknown emotion wells up within John’s chest seeing that. He takes another gulp of brandy, trying to drown it, but it doesn’t exactly help. A part of him wants to get drunk (can he get drunk anymore?), but he doesn’t know if it’s because he’s happy about the victory or if it’s because he _should_ be happy and he’s trying to force himself to be.

Instead he tears himself away from the window. He shouldn’t be looking at Lee anymore. Their time is over. ( _Over,_ John reminds himself. _He’s on his own now_ ).  

* * *

There wasn’t supposed to be so much Balladeer in Lee Harvey Oswald.

But the way the Balladeer works is strange, because it’s an idea. And if the hope of that idea still lives within _someone,_ then it can still exist. And so Lee is not Lee Harvey Oswald but just Lee, because there is Balladeer in the back of his mind, in his heart, in his eyes, and John can see it. There’s a deep kindness that shouldn’t exist. A deep love that’s impossible to escape.

_Lee Harvey Oswald_ is the man who killed John F. Kennedy with his own gun and his own idea. A man who was trying to prove something, or maybe make his name a landmark in history, or who was just angry. At everything.

_Lee_ is the man who needed convincing. Lee is the man who, more than anything, just needed family, and hope, and love. Things John could never give him, but someone could. Lee wasn’t completely unfixable. He could have been saved.

And John Wilkes Booth broke him beyond repair. Turned him into _Lee Harvey Oswald._  The same way he took the Balladeer and turned _them_ into Lee.

John’s been drinking too much. He should not have said all that to Charles Guiteau. Guiteau doesn’t get it, at least, too far gone with his own rum to notice the stupid sob that John isn’t able to hold back.

(It’s not him, John reassures himself. He’s always been an emotional drunk). (He doesn’t let himself remember that ‘emotional’ usually means ‘raging’, not ‘feeling like his heart is being ripped in half and being surprised that his heart still exists’).

* * *

“Booth,” the Proprietor says. “You don’t seem to be enjoying yourself.”

“I didn’t want to kill the Balladeer,” John says. He really is drunk now. He is drunk and self-loathing. He’s never hated himself before. Other things, sure. But never himself, because he’s always been in full support of all his own decisions. Now, apparently not. This truly is rock bottom.

“Is that so?” The Proprietor raises an eyebrow at him. That’s all that John can focus on: the eyebrow. “What’d make you chipper up? Want to kill another President? I know you like a challenge. 2017 is an interesting year; you could try there-”

“No,” John says, with more force than he intends. “I want to go back to Lee.”

“Are you sure?” the Proprietor says. “I’m telling you, 2017-”

“Lee.” That’s all John can think. And he sees what looks like disappointment, or anger, cross over the Proprietor’s face.

He thinks he hears the Proprietor say, “I’ll have to take care of that.”

And then he must pass out.

* * *

The next time John looks through the window, he is sober and Lee is awake. They (whoever _they_ are) have finally given Lee a sweater; it swallows him, and he looks far too small and afraid.

This makes John wonder if _he_ was the same way in the barn, stripped of his grace and glitter. Probably not. John was probably just wrecked and angry. Not pitiable. The kind of person you'd want to run away from instead of try to help. Lee is already young and sad and scared. That’s just not how it’s told in the history books.

Lee’s being yelled at. It takes John a moment to realize the yelling isn’t in English. It’s sharp around the edges, shrill and brittle.

The woman is young as well, but like Lee has a kind of permanent defeat already etched into her face. She’s disheveled and her hands are clenched into shaking fists. Ah. So this must be Marina Oswald, shouting at Lee in Russian.

John doesn’t know Russian. That’s what the suicide note was written in, but he wasn’t reading it. He’d already memorized what it said. It had been quite well-composed; for someone who’d gotten such low marks in writing, Lee has a surprising way with words-

But that isn’t important. Marina says, “ _Eta strana uzhe nenavidit nashu sem'yu. To, chto vy sdelali, nikogda ne budut proshcheny,_ ” and “ _Kak ty mog tak postupit' so mnoy?_ ” and “ _Chto vy nadelali, chto vy nadelali-_ ” and with every sharp syllable Lee looks more horrified and more scared.

“Marina,” he says, “I don’t know. I don’t know what, I-”

“Alek _,_ ” she says. Tears shimmer on the brink of formation within her eyes. She says one word in English. “Why?”

And Lee says, “I don’t know,” and he puts his head in his hands. He closes his eyes and opens them and closes them again. “ _Marina, ya ne znayu, chto sluchilos. Ya ne znayu, chto delat'_.” John has no idea what that means, but the pain with which Lee says it affects him, fills him with a deep pity he wasn’t aware he was capable of experiencing.

Marina doesn’t seem to feel the same way. Her gaze grows icy; her tears freeze.

John has always thought of anger as hot, an emotion of fire, but Marina Oswald makes it cold. She looks at Lee as if she has no feelings for him at all, love or hate or otherwise, like all that’s inside her is emptiness when it comes to him, and suddenly John knows why Lee feels so alone. So completely unloved. Marina doesn’t care if she hurts him or not. She’s not trying to hurt him, but if she does she’ll walk away without regret.

“ _Ya ne khochu, ya ne vstrechal vas,_ ” she says, in a tone of clear honesty. The words roll off her tongue like knives; she’s throwing them but not aiming, not looking at all. Every single one hits the target, though. “ _Vse, chto vy sdelali eto mne bol'no. Ya ne dumayu, chto vy imeyete v vidu. Eto tol'ko to, chto vy.”_

Lee sinks down like he’s trying to disappear, to stop existing completely. His eyes are still closed, shut tight against looking at her. He looks- well, John realizes with a pang, like the Balladeer did. When all the assassins had gathered around them, when that realization was just dawning on them, that things were hopeless. When, John thought, it must have hurt the most.

That was the part of the killing where he had questioned, where for one second he’d wanted to step away from his “family” and toward the Balladeer, to salvage that breaking creature from the horrors of the truth. Now with Lee he feels that same inexplicable urge- just to save him. To step into 1963 and carry Lee out, to warm and hold him, to hear his heart beat and never stop, to take out all that fear and sadness and replace it with something else. Perhaps a sense of mission, like John himself has. That’s the best coping method. _You have saved your country,_ he wants to say to Lee. _You’ve changed the world. Isn’t that enough? Doesn’t that complete you?_

But that wouldn’t help Lee. Lee doesn’t want to change the world; he doesn’t care about his country. John already tried that, and it only made Lee look at him with that deep Balladeer sadness and made him say “ _I wish you’d stop thinking about causes and ideas for one second and remember_ people.”  

John’s solution to problems is to get angry about them, to rant and rage (while being very charismatic), to maybe shoot a President. But Lee is a new kind of problem that can’t be solved that way. And- and now Lee might be crying, and John _can’t_ go into 1963 and fix it.

_“Ya khochu, chtoby ya ne sushchestvovalo, yesli eto to, chto ty dumayesh' obo mne,”_ Lee chokes out.

Marina nods. _“Eto to, chto ya dumayu o tebe.”_

He swallows and bites down hard on his lip, hard enough that John can see a bead of blood well up under Lee’s teeth. _“Zatem ostavit' menya umirat', pozhaluysta,”_ he says, then quietly and in English, “I know. I was going to kill myself.”

_“Kakiye?”_

_“Nichego,”_ Lee says.

Marina looks at him for one more second, then turns away, begins to leave.

“Marina?” Lee calls, finally looking at his wife.

She turns.

He looks in debate with himself. Then, he says, “Junie _nuzhna novaya para obuvi._ ”

Marina nods again, and leaves. The door slams shut behind her, and Lee stretches his sleeves around his hands and lays his head on his knees and just sits there shaking and John can’t look away. Unconsciously, he reaches out towards the image of Lee, before snapping out of that idiocy.

He doesn’t know what has been said, but he knows that Lee’s reaction  is twisting his emotions in shapes they shouldn’t be able to go anymore. He’s awakened things that John was sure had died.

Lee is making John Wilkes Booth question his actions.

And John never questions his actions. He is so certain of everything he does, so sure that it’s the right thing. He doesn’t regret. He doesn’t change his mind _._ He’s too strong-willed and severe and _right_ for that.

Except when it comes to Lee, or the Balladeer, or the one being that is both of them. The Balladeer has a way of making John long for things to be different- when no, things are right exactly the way they are.

And seeing Lee like this, so destroyed, not completed by the assassination but evening more torn apart by it, makes John once again long for a different outcome, against his will.

John’s ideals are the most important thing to him. They always have been. That’s why he could never keep friends for long- after a few years they’d realize that he couldn’t be loyal to them, not in the way he was loyal to the Confederacy. That’s why he dragged Davey and his other friends into his plot to kill Lincoln without an ounce of regret, pushed them straight into their graves; because his affection for humans could only extend so far beyond his hatred of the Union.

He cared more for the South than his own family, his own brother, and when Edwin had announced his support of the Union, John had cut the fraternal bonds between them. And Lucy, his fiancee, the only woman he had ever cared about enough to try and marry, had been driven away by the fact that he could never give his heart to her because it already belonged to his cause. She had looked at him the same way Lee had looked at him in the end when she said, “You love your country more than you love me.” And then she’d left him (like how Davey had left him, like how he’d left Lee, alone).

Even the other assassins view John as extreme. They all have someone to care about. Something to love. But John- he doesn’t _love,_ exactly. He wants. He wants things to get better; he wants to fix the country; he wants to bring down governments and make people listen and change the world. Love is just another concept he doesn’t understand. Doesn’t really want to understand. A distraction.

A pain.

“What are you doing?”

John flinches, ripping his eyes away from where they’ve been fixated on Lee for god knows how long, taking a step back from the window.

Sara Jane Moore stares at him with a strange expression. She can’t have been here for long, he thinks- she’s anything but quiet; he would have noticed her sooner-

“Nothing,” he says. “I was doing nothing.”

“And here I was thinking you were a good actor,” Moore says, a smile tugging at her lips.

“What are you talking about?” John says.

“You know,” Moore says, “I may be a little bit-” she flaps her hands around, searching for the word- “out-of-whack, but I’m not stupid.” She puts her hands on her hips and talks like she is the premiere authority on this topic. “I’ve had five husbands. Besides, I spend too much time around Hinckley and Squeaky. I’ve seen a lot of pained, longing stares.”

John attempts to sidestep her but she’s surprisingly fast, stepping in front of him once again.

“Excuse me if I come off as impolite, but what,” he says, “does that have anything to do with me?”

“I know that look, buddy boy,” Moore says, and boops him on the nose.

John flinches back from her… boop (what?) and says, “Where did I give you the impression that you were allowed to call me ‘buddy boy’?”

“Shush,” Moore says. “As your friend, I have a revelation to share with you.”

By this point John has dropped all pretense of politeness. There’s no point being a proper gentleman anymore, anyway. He’s in the company of people who have never learned the meaning of manners. “You’re not my friend.”

“Sure I am.” Moore grins at him. “All of us, we’re family now.”

“I don’t have friends,” John says, turning away from her and crossing his arms over his chest. Immediately he regrets this gesture- it means he’s backing down, defending himself, and then Moore says-

“You love Lee, don’t you?”

Something passes through John- a burning sensation that he can’t name, and then it passes down through his feet and rivets him to the floor.

“Or the Balladeer. Or both,” she continues. “I can’t see in your head. Though it’d be cool if I could. Then I’d be a psychic. One of my friends, Pauline, she’s a psychic. Well, that’s her side job. She’s also a hairdresser, but she gives the shittiest haircuts. Dang, you should have seen this one lady’s reaction when she saw her perm- it was priceless- Pauline’s much better at tarot if you ask me-”

“What?” John says.

“Well, the perm looked more like that curly pasta than hair, and she started shrieking, and threw a container of bleach at Pauline, and then Pauline had to go to the emergency room because the bleach-”

“No.” John screws his eyes tightly shut, waving one hand in the air on the borderline of wildly. “What you said… before.”

“Oh, that you’re in love with Lee? Yeah, it’s pretty obvious. You don’t have to lie, pretty much everyone can see through you. Buddy boy. Do you have any gum?” She looks him over. “Duh, of course you don’t. Did they even have gum back in eighteen-whatever? I bet it was gross. Totally flavorless.” She sticks a hand in her purse, rooting around, until she pulls out a small container labeled ‘Tic Tacs’. “Close enough. Want one?”

“No,” John says. “And I’m _not in love_ with Lee.”

Moore stares at him for a second with her mouth hanging open. What John assumes is a Tic Tac falls off her tongue and sticks on her sweater. She plucks it off and pops it back in her mouth. Then she puts an arm around his shoulders. He stiffens. He doesn’t like being touched. Unless it’s Lee. That’s okay. ( _No,_ he thinks. _No, no, goddamnit, no._ )

“Sweetie, you’re not fooling anyone. You’ve been moping around ever since you got back.” She pauses thoughtfully. “You were moping around after we killed the Balladeer too. You looked kind of… horrified. I mean, even Czolgosz noticed. And he has the empathy level of a- well, a Czolgosz, I guess. And didn’t you start crying at Guiteau last night?”

“Guiteau is insane,” John says. “You shouldn’t believe anything he says. Ever. Also, I don’t cry.” After a pause he says, “And I don't love Lee.”

Moore pulls back from him, putting her hands on his shoulders and looking up at him sadly. For some reason this reminds him of his sister Asia, but he shoves the thought away.

“Oh, sweetie,” she says. “You really don't know, do you?”

And then she wraps her arms around his torso, squeezing out all of his air.

“What. Are. You. Doing?” John says, staring down in partial disbelief at the short woman constricting his lungs.

“I'm hugging you,” Moore says. “You obviously need it.”

He is John Wilkes Booth. He doesn't get called ‘sweetie’. He doesn't get _hugged._ He tries in vain to free his arms from the embrace, but Sara Jane Moore is much stronger than she looks and she has him completely immobilized. John thinks weakly if that if they were in a fight, she'd probably win.

“You poor thing!” she’s saying. “Shit, you don’t even know your own emotions. That must be so depressing.”

He grits his teeth. “Please stop touching me.”

“Oh, alright.” Moore gives him one last squeeze and then lets go. Still, she looks at him with… lord, that’s pity, isn’t it. “You are a sad man,” she says.

“I’m _not_ sad,” he says.

She _tsks_ at him with a shake of her head. “So sad you don’t even know it. You should go talk to Lee.”

John’s heart gives an involuntary jump in his chest at the thought of going back, but it’s replaced with frustration. “I _can’t!_ ” he snaps. Finally, he’s angry- it feels good to be angry. More natural. “Goddamnit, you talk about this like it’s simple!”

“What’s so complicated about it?” Moore shrugs. “So you love him. Go back to 1963. Get him out of there. Kiss him again. Go do bad shit to America with him or sing songs or revive the Confederacy or whatever the hell it is you like. Live your life. Be happy for once. Stop worrying about everything and just do the shit you want to do. _Feel something._ ”

“I can’t.”

“Why the hell not?”

John struggles for the words. “That’s not how things work.”

“Sweetie, none of this is how things work,” Moore says. “Yesterday I got high with Squeaky Fromme and Charlie Guiteau. Well, Guiteau might have not been high, cause he’s just crazy. I hallucinated that Zangara went around attacking everyone with a gigantic baseball bat. You’re fricken’ John Wilkes Booth, you asshole! You killed Abe Lincoln! You just came up behind him at a theater and shot him! How badass is that? Our lives are fricken’ insane. Hell, you eloping with Lee Harvey Oswald wouldn’t be the weirdest thing for us to see, not by a long shot. The point is, you’ve got to ask yourself: what do _you_  want? You. Not your country. You know what Lee wants, but what about you?”

John just stares at her. He really has no words for Sara Jane Moore.

“Think about it,” she says. Her eyes drift behind him. “Look.”

He turns. Lee’s fallen asleep again, cheeks glazed with tears, the picture of unhappiness but still reverted to the Balladeer’s innocence.

“Aww, I feel bad for him,” Moore says.

Then, finally- finally- she leaves. She leaves John with his emotions, which have gotten even more confusing.

* * *

He just wants to talk to Lee. That’s all he wants. John doesn’t know what he’s going to say, but it wouldn’t hurt if he went back just one more time, only to make sure that Lee doesn’t talk, keeps his mouth shut. That’s it. That’s what he’ll tell the Proprietor.

John isn’t one for breakdowns, but they always seem to come before something big. For example, he had a mental breakdown the week before he killed Lincoln, because the Confederacy had _surrendered,_ but he knew, he knew the war wasn’t over (that it would never be over); he knew his countrymen were never going to be treated the same way again.

In a way, this is the same concept. Just because Lee Harvey Oswald has done what he was supposed to doesn’t mean that everything is good and safe. If Lee breaks during interrogation and tells the FBI that he’d gone to kill himself and then was struck with the idea to kill the President or something like that, then the assassination won’t have the same effect.

It’s the mystery- why did Lee do it, if it was even him at all- that makes this a turning point. It’s the fear. It’s the thing that makes people look around and think “I am not safe in this country anymore”.

John is going to tell the Proprietor that he would like to go and talk to Lee again to make sure this doesn’t happen.

Except the Proprietor isn’t where he’s meant to be (at the bar).

“Where is the Proprietor?” John says to no one in particular. It’s Squeaky Fromme, sitting at the bar and filing her nails,  who answers.

“He’s gone to shoot Oswald.”

It takes John a second to register that _Oswald_ means Lee Harvey Oswald which means Lee ( _Lee, Lee, Lee_ ) and then his heart is dropping and he’s saying-

“What?”

“It’s November 24th, dumbass,” Fromme says.

“It’s so cool that Jack Ruby is the Proprietor,” Hinckley says. “Like, I never knew that. I knew there was a conspiracy somehow-”

“Shut the fuck up, Hinckley,” Fromme says.

“He’s going to kill Lee,” John says.

“Duh.” Fromme rolls her eyes. “What, sad your boyfriend’s gonna die?” She giggles. “I thought Hinckley was already dating him.”

“Lee Harvey Oswald is _not_ my boyfriend,” Hinckley says, red rising on his cheeks. “I am faithful to Jodie. You know that, Squeaky-”

“The Proprietor is going to shoot Lee,” John says, his head spinning. Again he feels sick. “Because of me.” Lee. _Lee._

“Are you done?” Fromme says.

John is John Wilkes Booth. The man who killed Abraham Lincoln. The man who, unbeknownst to America, has brought about the Kennedy assassination as well. He has so much blood on his hands: Lincoln’s, his friends’, his own, Kennedy’s. The Balladeer’s. The Balladeer even said that _John_ was the one to kill a country, so he supposes America’s blood is on his hands as well.

He isn’t the one killing Lee but this is his fault; he knows it is. It’s his fault for letting Lee get under his skin, turn him into more than the Proprietor’s puppet. Re-awaken some lost humanity. John said no to the Proprietor. Nobody says no to the Proprietor.

And now Lee is paying the price. John’s hands will be stained with the blood of everything he’s ever cared about. Lee will join a list.

John feels like he’s running through molasses. The world passes in a blur, fast, but far too slow at the same time.

He gets to the window just in time to see Lee, held fast between two guards.

And to see the Proprietor come right up to Lee with a gun, and shoot him in the side.

John’s hand hits the glass, the barrier between him and Lee, and he can only watch as the Proprietor is dragged away, as Lee crumples in pain, as the authorities swarm and swarm and do everything except make Lee’s hurt go away.

Assassination is supposed to change the world. Essentially, it’s an act of creation, not destruction.

This isn’t assassination. This is murder. Killing the Balladeer- it was murder.

Murder is injustice. Like the slaughter of the Confederacy, it’s a crime, it’s bad. And like Abraham Lincoln’s murder of 600,000 Southerners, the Proprietor’s shot fills John with rage. Rage that consumes him from the inside with its fire, rage that incinerates all rational thought and replaces it with just this- his want- his _need-_ for justice.

John Wilkes Booth has a new cause.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((well dang johnny))
> 
> Russian translations (I don't know Russian and I used the Internet for this, so I'm sorry if it's incorrect in any way): 
> 
> What Marina first said: "This country already hates our family. What you have done will never be forgiven," and "How could you do this to me?" and "What have you done, what have you done-" 
> 
> What Lee first said: "Marina, I do not know what happened. I do not know what to do." 
> 
> Marina: "I wish I had never met you," she says, in a tone of clear honesty... "All you've done is hurt me. I do not think that's what you mean. It's just what you do." 
> 
> Lee (right after a long period of JWB gayness): "I wish I didn't exist, if that's what you think of me." 
> 
> Marina: "It is what I think of you." 
> 
> Lee: "Then leave me to die, please." ("I know. I was going to kill myself.") 
> 
> Marina: "What?" (she doesn't understand what he said in English)
> 
> Lee: "Nothing." (Marina starts to leave) "Marina?...Junie needs a new pair of shoes." 
> 
>  
> 
> please leave comments or Kudos if u like


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